12: Rehabilitation
by cathrl
Summary: Mark's finally reconciled himself to his new life. He's doing an important job as the administrative executive officer of Team 7. G-Force isn't something he even thinks about any more. Or so he keeps telling himself. One day he might even believe it.
1. Chapter 1

**Rehabilitation**

Mark stared at the paperwork in front of him, realising he hadn't taken any of it in for several minutes. Piles of training requirements for the Team 7 security officers, lists of available courses. Most important, though few people knew it, were those pertaining to a sixteen year old security officer named Dylan North. As Welsh as his name; he was newly graduated from the Academy, even more newly implanted, and in need of some plausible assignments which wouldn't take up too much of his time, or reveal implant-enhanced abilities which he hadn't yet learnt to hide.

Keeping an eye on Dylan was about the last formal link he had with black section, the only part of his job which couldn't have been done by any one of a hundred medium rank security officers. The trashed lower implant in the back of his neck, most of its functionality deliberately disabled as a last resort when the experts had been unable to repair it, was the cause of him needing a desk job at all. The most obvious result of it was the wheelchair, legacy of a vicious fate which seemed never to have given up kicking him down even lower every time he thought things couldn't get any worse. Anyone else would have waltzed out after waking up from the operation to disable the misfiring implant which had him convulsing uncontrollably on the floor. He'd been implanted aged four, and every neural impulse he had used the implant as a short-cut. Most had rerouted right back the way they had worked before the implant. Not all. He'd woken up from the operation with no movement in his legs, and, despite ISO calling in every neural specialist they could find, nothing had made the slightest difference.

It wasn't hopeless, his physio kept telling him, and he kept telling himself. He had sensation. That meant the nerves were active. Movement could return at any time. Well, it had been over four months now since the operation, and it hadn't happened yet. It might not be hopeless, but he'd given up daring to hope. He'd been told everything was going to be fine too many times to believe it. He'd even stopped counting the days.

Right now, he'd rather not have had sensation, thank you very much. The rehab therapist's latest idea was neural stimulation - as far as he could tell, this involved the sort of torture which he wouldn't have inflicted on his worst enemies. It was supposed to stimulate his body into moving away. It worked as far as making him _want_ to move. That was the problem. He wanted to move. Needed to, desperately. And couldn't, not so much as a twitch.

Three days ago, the therapy session had been. Tariq had warned him there might be some discomfort from the tiny subdermal implants in his feet, and he'd nodded. _Yeah, right, go on, I was the Eagle, I can take anything you can do to me_.

Who had he been kidding? He was in hell, had been for three days, couldn't relax, couldn't sleep, couldn't hide from it. His concentration was good enough that work got him away from it temporarily - but he couldn't work twenty-four hours a day. He was on eighteen for today, so far, and he knew he had to go back to his quarters, eat, rest, sleep. All he wanted to do was howl. Well, no, all he wanted to do was throw himself on the floor and convulse from head to foot until his wretchedly overstimulated nervous system was satisfied.

_Ten minutes_, he promised himself. Ten more minutes to sort out how to make it plausible that young North yet again wasn't taking any of the communal martial arts courses which were easily available, and instead had to take private one-to-one lessons so he didn't 'fall behind'. Then he'd go back to his room and have himself a long, hot bath, something warm to drink, and then he'd be relaxed and tired enough to sleep. It would work. It hadn't last night, or the night before, but this time would be different.

Languages were the answer, he decided. Put the kid on the same type of Spectran course that Jason and Rick were both taking on paper, and a couple of the other operatives were doing for real. That could swallow up huge chunks of time, and he could pencil it in any time he liked to overlap with the courses he needed to block. Mark filled in the proposed timetable, forwarded it to the Commander Nykinnen for approval, and shut the computer terminal down for the night. That done, he shifted himself back into his wheelchair, manoeuvred through the narrow gap between the end of his desk and the wall, and headed out.

Executive assistant to the commander of Team Seven, even given Mark's relatively high official rank of Lieutenant Commander, didn't rate an office with a window, and night and day were interchangeable for someone sleeping as badly as he was at the moment. Out in the common room it was dark, the blinds still open over the long windows on the one external wall, except that the room was illuminated by flashes of coloured light coming from around the corner. Mark frowned in confusion as he locked his office door behind him, then wheeled his chair forward, avoiding tables and cursing those who left chairs in thoroughfares. Only once he was beyond the end of the wall of lockers could he see the source of the lights, and then he stopped. And smiled.

The light show came from the display screen of the neural interface flight simulator. Someone was working hard on it, since they'd presumably started out back when it was actually daylight several hours ago, or they'd have had the main lights on in here. And the screen above showed the long, slim, tapering white nose of a craft that Mark had loved dearly, weaving in and out of the sort of artificial obstacle course that he remembered all too well.

Not an easy one, either. Too hard for this pilot. As Mark watched, the G-1 overcorrected for one turn, wavered back just barely making the next, and missed the following gate by miles. There was a bout of what he presumed was swearing, in a language he didn't recognise, and the pilot stripped the helmet off to reveal straggly black hair, swung round, and jumped a mile when he realised he was being watched.

"Commander Jarrald! I'm sorry, sir. I didn't know you were there."

"I thought Commander Nykinnen had banned that particular aircraft simulation." The G-1 had been getting far too much attention, mostly from people who badly needed the flight time on more prosaic aircraft. Besides, while Mark knew exactly what North's real status was, the kid had no idea who he had been. He'd also been asked to keep an eye on just how good Dylan was at dissimulating.

"Sir, I have full flight clearances on the other available aircraft. Commander Nykinnen gave me permission to use it in my own time."

"After the real thing, are you, Lieutenant?"

Dylan shrugged ruefully. "It would be nice. She's hard work though, sir."

"That she is," he agreed, and promptly bit his tongue. He was supposed to be testing North's abilities to hide his real status, not the other way round.

Dylan was frowning. "I didn't know you were a pilot, sir?"

"I'm not." In his Team Seven persona he had, of course, passed basic flight, but he'd not been a _pilot_. Not someone who flew for fun, who lived for it, who fought over the simulators and argued over them the rest of the time. He'd steered clear in order to preserve his cover, pretending to be someone for whom a basic flight qualification was just another necessary evil. But it was truth, now, however much he hated it. He'd not been in a plane since he'd darn nearly crashed the G-1, the day he'd admitted to his problem. Ten very long months ago.

"Would you like a ride?" Dylan proffered the second, observer's, helmet, and Mark froze.

He should say no. Really, really should, not just because staying far away from everything he'd been able to do before kept him sane, but because he'd been warned off neural interfaces of any kind. He was supposed to be persuading his neural pathways back to where they should have been all along, and the neural interface would intercept them and sweep them off down its own path, sending back its own images instead. Its own sensations. Normality. A pilot's body, athletic and toned, that worked, that moved when instructed, instead of screaming useless instructions louder and louder to muscles that just weren't listening.

Five minutes in a slave helmet. It couldn't be any worse for him than what he knew he was going to have to do very soon, probably within the next couple of hours: go to the medics and tell them he couldn't handle the neural stimulation any longer.

"Commander?"

_Oh, to hell with it_. The lure of five minutes of feeling human again, after three days of continuous hell, was too strong for him. He deserved something like this. Mark manoeuvred his chair to within slave cable range of the console with a skill he hated needing, and put his hand out for the helmet. "Just five minutes, Lieutenant."

"Understood, sir."

He settled the helmet on his head and, with a deep breath, flipped the switch that would put him into the simulation as observer. He'd see everything Dylan saw, feel everything he felt. He couldn't do anything to affect the simulation, which was why he felt this was probably safe. He was reasonably sure he could fly the simulator as well as he ever had, give or take months without practice. He was also quite sure that he'd very rapidly be unable to face the real world if he did so. Just sitting here, his body knowing it was in the pilot's seat of the G-1, hands and feet on the controls, feeling the vibration through the pedals, the slight give of the rubber handgrips of the control yokes, was bliss. A million times better than what real life contained for him these days. Five minutes experiencing someone else's piloting, though, was by definition limited. No possibility of losing himself in there for a dangerous length of time, his brain contentedly ignoring the demands of his body for food or liquid or warmth. And no need for him to be the one to decide when it was over and to face the real world again.

He listened with half an ear to Dylan explaining the controls, and warning him that there would be the simulation of high g. Mark resisted the urge to correct some of his numbers - it was perfectly possible to launch the G-1 at only three g, provided you were careful. More difficult, though. Three and a half was easier on the piloting, harder on the pilot. Maybe he should suggest to the Kite that the kid could use some extra help. Maybe he should do it himself? But that would involve telling Dylan who he had been. It was bad enough getting the pitying half-stares on the few occasions he went into black section these days. He could do without someone else carrying it on out here too.

"Ready, Commander?"

"Hit it," Mark responded, and leant back and enjoyed a power takeoff which, while not a patch on what he'd been able to do himself, was quite passable. The obstacles were missing this time. Dylan took the G-1 high enough that the ground wasn't an issue, and then swung into the standard set of ISO aerobatics tests. Nothing fancy, nothing too taxing, nothing that would pull more than five gs or so at any point. Simple weaving turns and loops, blue sky above, green ground far below. Pure heaven.

It was over way too soon. Dylan brought the G-1 down in a long swooping turn directly into a runway approach, something he'd never have been allowed to do in real life, touched with only the shadow of a jolt, and brought her to a standstill.

"What do you think, sir?"

_I think your right turns are considerably smoother than your left ones, your attitude control isn't all it might be, and you were a little heavy on the throttle going into the third loop_. Mark took the helmet off, said simply, "Thank you," and stood up to put it back on the shelf above the console.

He'd half turned back into the room before he saw the chair, and reality hit like a sledgehammer. All movement and control was gone as if it had never been there, and he felt himself fall straight down with no way to stop it.

Dylan caught him before he hit the floor, obviously using implant-enhanced reflexes and speed, but Mark wasn't going to complain. He was too busy trying to stay in control. A desperate compulsion to move had exploded inside his head the moment he'd simultaneously realised that he'd stood up and that the ability had gone again, and this time it was so intense he could barely breathe. He was vaguely aware of being lowered to the floor, of Dylan's confused comment switching to alarm, to an insistent question about who his doctor was and who he should call.

"Chris Johnson," he managed to gasp. _I shouldn't have said that - he's black section_... But it was done, and besides, Chris was who he needed, there was no question about it. This was unbearably awful. Mark curled on his side as best he could and counted seconds, hanging on with everything he had. This wasn't fair! All he'd wanted was five lousy minutes of respite and it did this to him! What the hell was happening to him now? What more could conceivably go wrong? _I moved, dammit_!

"Talk to me, Mark." That was Chris, simultaneously sooner than he'd expected and having taken forever to get here. "What happened?"

"I stood up," he forced out. Chris _had_ to know this, mustn't do anything to jeopardise the neural connection that had, however briefly, been there.

"Did he fall?" he heard Chris ask, and Dylan replied that yes, he'd fallen, but he hadn't hit the floor, and he certainly had stood up first.

"Mark, can you move your legs now?"

"No." Despite his best efforts, it came out as a sob.

"Okay, son. Don't worry. We'll get you back to Medical and take a good look at what those nerves are doing. Where do you hurt?"

"Don't hurt." He gritted his teeth, rode out another wave of torture, and ground out, "I need to move and I can't."

"Did Tariq try that compulsion treatment?"

"Yes." _He knows - he understands. Please let him know how to make this stop!_

"Can you sit in the chair?"

"No," he was forced to admit. For a minute or two, maybe. Not all the way to black section.

"Okay. Hang in there. I don't want to give you any neurosuppressants, not if things have finally starting working."

Mark managed a nod, and then just tucked his head in and tried to hold on. It had worked. It would work again, if he could only get through this. Hang on. Just hang on. One minute, and another, and another. He was barely aware of the gurney, or arriving in black section. He had the impression that people around him had expressed concern, but had no idea who they were. The next thing he knew properly was a blank whiteness everywhere as the compulsion faded.

"Mark, can you hear me?" Chris's voice.

He couldn't resist a choked half-laugh. "You always say that."

"I probably do. How do you feel?"

"Better. What did you do?"

"This is a very basic neural interface - like the simulators, but with nothing programmed. Just to take you out of the loop for a few minutes so you can tell us exactly what happened."

Even inside the interface, Mark felt himself flush scarlet. "I took a ride with young North in the G-1 flight simulator. I know I shouldn't have, but dammit, Chris, I needed a break so bad!"

"A break?"

_Please don't make me spell this out_. "I've had a rough few days."

"You went in the simulator to get away from the compulsion, and when you came out everything worked, just briefly."

Mark looked down, even though there was nothing to see but white. "That's about it."

"Interesting. Mark, I need to speak to a few people. Shall I leave the interface on so you can get some rest?"

_God, that's so tempting_... "You said it was a bad idea."

"Using it as a way of escaping from real life is a lousy idea. Ten minutes now won't hurt you."

It wouldn't have to. Right now if Chris had suggested taking him out of it, he wasn't at all sure he could have handled it. As Chris's voice faded from the simulation, Mark shut his eyes and relaxed. He knew exactly why he'd been told not to use these things. He was fully aware that he would never leave again of his own volition.

He had no idea how long he was in there alone. Only that it was warm and comfortable, and he could relax. That was enough. Right now Chris could take as long as he wanted. Twelve hours sounded good.

"Okay, Mark, I'm going to turn the interface down."

_No_! "Down? Chris, _wait_..."

"Trust me for five minutes more? If it's bad, you can go back in while we switch off the stimulation permanently."

"Okay," he managed through gritted teeth. What choice did he have, really?

"Tell me when you start sensing reality. I'm merging the two."

Mark would have stared if he'd had anything to stare at. You didn't _do_ that. Merging the virtual world and the real one was downright dangerous, since it was supposed to be near impossible to tell the difference between them. Interact with the wrong one, and you could have yourself an appalling accident in the real world. Not that he could, of course, not lying on a gurney, but he'd never heard of this being done.

Chris continued, "I spoke to a neurologist who's worked extensively with VR, and he suggested your nervous system might be responding to the stimulation, but in such a way that it's overloaded. You gave it a five minute complete break in the simulator, and then we suspect it coped just briefly before it overloaded again."

"So if there's just a bit of real world in there, only a bit of stimulation..."

"Exactly. It may do nothing - it's not like there's any precedent for your condition, we're all in the dark here. It won't hurt to try. Relax for me, and push against my hand when you feel it."

Mark shut his eyes and concentrated as hard as he ever had. All this time, all this work, and then out of the blue a possible solution he'd never even considered. Was he starting to feel something? He thought so, and then decided not.

And then, even before he'd felt anything he was sure was reality, both legs twitched. Not hard, but enough for him to be completely sure that it had happened, even before Chris's "There. Feel that?"

He still didn't believe it, sure or not. One involuntary twitch wouldn't get him back on his feet. He could feel Chris's hands against his ankles now, though, and hoping beyond all reason that this would work, he took a deep breath and pushed against the pressure.


	2. Chapter 2

Three days later, he left black section. Still in the wheelchair, but finally with real hope of getting out of it in the near future. He could move again. Even after they'd removed the torture devices in his feet. He didn't fully understand what was different now, and he wasn't convinced the doctors did, either. He'd heard a lot of analogies - the most popular one being that his nervous system had been rebooted. He was reasonably sure nervous systems didn't work that way. Right now, though, he didn't care. He had a nagging feeling that if he tried to analyse it too far he might discover it was impossible and go right back to how he'd been. No, his legs worked again, and that was good enough for him.

Not just reflexes, but controlled movement. Provided no strength was involved, of course. His first attempt to get out of bed had confirmed what the doctor had said and he hadn't believed, as he'd landed in an undignified heap on the floor. Despite all the exercises and the electronics and the weight-bearing exercises, it had been too long since he'd been able to use his legs voluntarily, and all the muscle tone was gone. _All_ of it.

Chris had, thank goodness, managed not to say, "I told you so" while he helped Mark back into bed. He had, however, taken advantage of Mark's silent disbelieving embarrassment to sit down alongside him and explain matters to him again, slowly and carefully if not quite in words of one syllable. This time Mark had listened, and had appreciated that what he had been told really was going to apply to him too. He wasn't going to walk out of there - yes, he had stood up in the common room, but that had been fuelled by a one-off rush of adrenaline, and he'd almost certainly instinctively taken almost all his weight on his arms, pulling himself up on the console. It would take weeks to rebuild his leg strength. He'd need rehabilitation of an entirely different sort, intended to get him back to full fitness instead of learning to use what movement he still had. And it wasn't something he could rush. He simply wasn't going to be capable of exercising twelve hours a day, or even six, for a long while yet. He'd need to start out slowly. Learn to stand before he could walk, to walk before he could run.

And then Anderson had come in, and had been encouraging and enthusiastic and pleased for him. He hadn't said the one thing Mark had wanted to hear, though - not that Mark had expected it, if he was honest with himself. He knew exactly how things stood. Black section would be only too delighted to have the Eagle back right this minute - but it was no longer a question of when he'd be back on G-Force. No more disruption for Earth's front line defence team. No putting them on hold waiting to see how much fitness he could get back how quickly, whether his implant could in fact be repaired. Rick Shayler's promotion to G-Force was permanent, and Mark was no longer considered part of it. Regardless of his new medical status, that hadn't changed; no miracle reinstatement for him. It had hurt for a surprisingly short time. He'd known for months that there was no way back for him. The moment he'd walked out, he'd lost all right to expect to lead them again. Not that they even knew. G-Force were on Riga, saving the galaxy again.

Right after he'd recovered from that one, he'd also learnt that one of his roles on Team Seven had become redundant. Dylan North, no fool, had put two and two together, gone to his fellow Force Two trainees, and asked them exactly who Lieutenant Commander Jarrald was and what his association was with black section. And they'd told him the truth. Mark wished he'd been a fly on the wall for that one, but sadly all he'd had was a third hand report, again through Chris. Dylan now knew exactly who he was, and there was no more need for him to pretend otherwise.

So, one more person on the list of those who would look at him with disbelieving pity. A long rehabilitation still ahead of him - to his complete lack of surprise, Chris had announced that he'd already spoken to Tariq about the change in his rehabilitation requirements. And many hours in between sessions when he'd need to be resting physically. He'd not quit the day job just yet.

* * *

><p>"I hear you're going to be in need of a real job before long," Nykinnen said at their standard Monday morning meeting.<p>

Mark laughed. "I already have a real job. At least, enough of one for someone who has so much rehab ahead of him it's not true. Maybe after that I'll start looking. I hear Team Three can use good pilots. Or the Red Rangers."

The other frowned. "This is none of my business, but...not G-Force?"

"G-Force has a new commander now. And a new jet pilot." He resisted the urge to trace invisible circles on the arm of the wheelchair with his finger.

"I'm sorry." Nykinnen shrugged. "Black section politics. Their loss is my gain. Like I've always said - when you want a better job, go get one."

Mark nodded slowly, considering the desk between them, piled with unstable stacks of paperwork. The job he did now had been intended to take some of the weight off the Team Seven commander. At the time, it had. But the war continued, the teams carried on growing in size, the Academy graduated more and more new security officers, and now Nykinnen's desk looked as bad as it ever had. Mark's wasn't much better, and after his weekend in black section medical, all his overtime of the previous week would be undone and he'd be back to trying to find a space for his coffee mug. Even so, this job wasn't for him. Not permanently. Not if there was an alternative.

"I owe you one, Commander. Enough to tell you I probably won't be here four months from now."

"Nothing would make me happier. For you, of course. In the meantime, we have two new Team Seven agents who need orientation courses. Transfers in from the UN forces."

Mark grinned, long experience of hiding his real feelings coming in more than useful. "Hand them over. I know a young lieutenant who could use a couple of hours answering stupid questions."

"Is there something going on I don't know about?" Nykinnen extracted two files, apparently at random, from some way down one of the piles, and passed them across to him.

"North found out I'm the Eagle. I suspect he's more than a little embarrassed about something he said to me beforehand. He's avoiding me."

Nykinnen nodded, and continued as if the previous exchange had never happened. "Haul him in and explain what's involved - they're arriving tomorrow. I agree - he needs experience dealing with fellow agents on a relatively formal level. Is that everything?"

"That's it."

Nykinnen leant back, his leather chair creaking, and then jumped as his phone rang. He picked it up, holding a hand up in farewell as Mark performed a neat turn in the floor space available, wheeled his chair out of the commander's office, and headed back to his own.

* * *

><p>"Commander Jarrald? You wanted to see me?" There was a decidedly nervous edge to Dylan North's tone.<p>

Mark looked up from his list of successful candidates in basic flight - Dave O'Leary had somehow contrived to fail it yet again - and waved his visitor to the one extra chair there was room for in his cupboard of an office. "You're being assigned to run orientation for two new officers who arrive tomorrow. I'll run you through what's involved, and -"

"I'm sorry, sir. I won't be here."

Mark's eyebrows went up. "And why not?"

Dylan North, sixteen years old, barely five foot seven inches tall, and by all accounts black section's best hope for Force Two's jump-pilot, glanced desperately at the two closed doors. "Permission to speak freely, sir?" His fingers flashed, signing, _Is this room secure_?

"It's secure, Raven," Mark assured him.

"We're spending a week training in zero g with Major Grant. On the biggest orbital communications platform."

"I see. And if you hadn't been able to tell me this, what would you have said?"

Dylan flushed. "I don't know, sir. I hadn't figured anything out, since I...you..."

"If I'd been taken ill, you could have been dealing with anyone. Don't take shortcuts with your cover story. Not ever."

"No, sir. Sorry, sir." He gulped visibly. "Sir, I apologise for being a jerk last week. Commander Nykinnen made it very clear I wasn't to pilot the G-1 in front of Team Seven and...I saw the chance to show off for once. That won't happen again, either. I feel a right idiot."

"Good. Now, forget it. The net result was that you did me a damn good turn. When you get back, come see me. You fly that simulator adequately, no more, and some of your basic techniques need a fair bit of work."

Dylan's eyes lit up. "Sir, I'd appreciate any help you can give me."

"You may not be saying that in a couple of weeks." Mark sighed, and crossed out Dylan's name on the sheet of paper in front of him. "I guess the Osprey's out of the running too? Enjoy zero g, and I'll see you when you get back. If O'Leary's in the common room, can you send him in to see me?"

Dylan grinned, the old enthusiasm back. "Dave's failed flight again, has he?"

Mark raised his eyebrows. "It's none of your business - but since you're interested, I'll be assigning you as his mentor. He needs that rating. Dismissed."

He'd never understood how someone who drove _well_ - even Jason said so, and O'Leary drove for ISO Racing too, these days - could be so truly incompetent in a plane. They'd teased Jason mercilessly about his lack of piloting skills, and he was certainly no superstar, but passing basic flight had never been an issue for him. O'Leary, though, had taken it three times at least already. Maybe four. And wasn't getting promoted out of Team Seven until he had the certificate, regardless of whether he was ever going to set foot in a plane again. Nor was lounging around indefinitely in Team Seven considered an acceptable option. It was past time that someone explained the situation to him in words of one syllable, and Nykinnen had obviously decided Mark was the person to do it.

Twenty minutes and one thoroughly depressed ISO race driver later, Mark's phone rang.

"Mark, could you come to my office immediately please?" Nykinnen's voice said, and there was a click as the phone went down before he'd even opened his mouth to speak.

_I guess I screwed something up_._ Let's hope it isn't O'Leary making a formal complaint about my lack of subtlety._ Mark sighed inwardly, pulled the wheelchair towards him and with the ease of long practice transferred himself across from the standard office chair he used in here. Nykinnen normally came over to him - so either he'd decided Mark needed the exercise, or this was serious.

Or it involved too many people for Mark's tiny box of an office. Nykinnen was in there, as were Anderson and Ivanov, and Mark had to resist the urge to cut and run. _What the hell_?

"Commander, we have a proposition for you," Anderson said as soon as he'd closed the door behind him.

"If it involves a controller's chair, the answer is still no."

"It does not," Ivanov told him, the deep Russian voice gruffer than ever. "Please, Mark, hear us out."

He nodded slowly, refusing to show any emotion. They couldn't hurt him any more than fate already had. They couldn't make him do a job he didn't want - and there was absolutely no reason for them to take this one away from him, and no way for them to do it inconspicuously.

"Our trainees are scheduled to go up to Comsat Three this afternoon."

"I know. Grant's taking them."

"Major Grant is flat on his back in medical with labyrinthitis - that's severe inflammation of the inner ear. He's not fit to ride in a car right now, let alone spend a week in zero g."

Mark couldn't resist a splutter of laughter. "Grant's got vertigo? Poetic justice. He's been such a bastard to Jason all these years."

Anderson simply waited for quiet before continuing. "We need someone to go up and supervise their training program. Someone who is highly competent in zero g, knows all the combat techniques the trainees need to learn, and has black section clearance. In addition, we need someone to assess how they work together as a team in an unfamiliar situation. Commander Nykinnen recommended you. To be honest, I'm more than a little embarrassed we hadn't asked you to start with."

Mark felt his jaw drop. Zero g? Well, he'd certainly _had_ the training in question, a very long time ago, though G-Force had never been involved in zero g combat for real. Their enemies had far better artificial gravity technology than ISO did.

"Mark, you would be so very good at this," Ivanov added. "And we need you, badly. You have so much expertise, and they have so little. And you, they respect. If the Eagle tells them they must work, they will."

Zero g. Where the fact that his legs didn't work - well, did now, just barely - would be irrelevant. He'd met more than one crippled pilot in rehab who was hoping for a zero g assignment. He was going to get out of the chair eventually, that was a given now that he could move again. But the thought of a week without it, right now, no more waiting and struggling, was still so tempting he couldn't find words.

"Chris has spoken to your rehab therapist - Tariq, is it?" That was Anderson again, and Mark felt a twitch of annoyance. The best thing about being fit again, apart from, well, being fit again, was going to be the end to everyone else checking his medical condition over the top of his head before telling him anything. "Long term zero g would not be a good thing for your chances of getting out of the chair. A week at this stage will be beneficial, allowing you to regain movement without too much strain. And your general fitness level is more than adequate."

He finally found his voice. "I'll do it. When and where do you want me?"

The relief in the room was almost tangible, as Ivanov cleared his throat. "Launch is at fifteen hundred hours today. Transport leaves here at twelve hundred."

"So I have an hour and a half to get ready?" Mark refused to sound surprised or excited, though he was quite sure his heart was beating twice as fast as normal. "I'd best be going. Commander Nykinnen, I'm not going to have time to finish up here -"

"You get yourself ready to go," Nykinnen told him. "We can cope."

His superior's desk had gained at least five extra files in the thirty minutes since their earlier meeting, but his pang of guilt was massively outweighed by anticipation. He'd work overtime when he got back.

"I'll need some sort of kit list, Chief. And a rundown of precisely what this training schedule is supposed to involve, so I can remind myself. Eleven thirty in black section early enough?"

"Ideal." Anderson's voice wavered sufficiently that Mark met his eyes, startled. "It's good to be working with you again, Mark. Thank you."

* * *

><p>By the time he'd made it back to his quarters, the computer screen was flashing at him with a whole pack of new messages: the training schedule he'd requested, a copy of the kit list that had been sent to the trainees, and messages from both Jason and Chris Johnson. So the new commander of G-Force was also on the list of people who decided what Mark was capable of before anyone actually asked him. Even if that involved an interstellar communication link to Riga. <em>Great<em>.

The message did make him feel a little better about himself, though. _Rather you than me_. _Good luck_. Not least because it was a normal, human message from someone he barely saw these days, other than when Jason came into Team Seven and they managed a brief private conversation in his office. That had last happened three weeks ago. And Jason was the member of G-Force he saw the most. _It's for the best_, he told himself firmly. _They have to carry on without you. They don't need reminding of the past all the time. Let them get on with their lives_.

Then he pushed it to the back of his mind and allowed himself a rueful smile. Operating in zero g for a week was, quite possibly, the only thing that he could still do better than Jason. He sent the training schedule to his handheld, and then considered the implications of Chris's message. _Please call me_. That one was less encouraging. If he was fit, what was the issue?

"Chris?"

"Thanks for getting back to me, Mark." There was more than relief in the tone, though. One of those _I'm not saying everything_ edges which Mark's training made it as easy to read as if the man had said it out loud.

"What's wrong? Anderson said you'd cleared me as fit."

"I have. And you are. Physically fit. But it's only a few days since your nervous system started working again, Mark. I'm concerned that this may be too much, too soon."

"Too much _what_?" Mark snapped, then forced himself back under rigid control. "Doctor, I'm being asked to go make sure a bunch of trainees practice a set of exercises I learnt a decade ago. I do this sort of thing every day at Team Seven. Why does zero g make it different?"

"Who the trainees are, and what they'll be learning, makes it different. You've gone out of your way to avoid contact with black section. Are you sure you're ready to pick it right up again?"

_Hell yes_. That wasn't the issue, though. "You think I'm _mentally_ unfit for this?"

"I'm not saying that."

Mark kept his temper with difficulty. "Black section medical thinks I'm mentally unfit? I doubt it, or Samuels would be making this call - he's the psychiatrist, not you. I'm up for this, and I'm _going_, Chris. I'm sick to death of being useless, and I don't need you to protect me from reality. I'll see you in a week."

He put the phone down without giving the other man a chance to respond, and turned his attention to the kit list. It was so short as to be almost non-existent, and it took him a couple of moments to realise that, of course, the trainees would be spending most of their time in birdstyle. He set his teeth against the pang of loss and yanked open the wardrobe door. He would be needing more standard clothing.

* * *

><p>By the time he was at the elevator to black section the first rush of adrenaline had worn off, and Mark was struggling not to shake. This was the closest to a mission he'd been in almost a year, and pitiful though a training cruise in charge of the Force Two trainees might be when compared to commanding G-Force, he missed combat training. Missed pulling g. Missed the discipline of martial arts - sure, he could have found <em>something<em> he could still do, meditation didn't need working limbs, he knew there were katas for paraplegics - but it wasn't the same. This was the closest he'd come to something that was the same since he'd walked out.

Dimitri was waiting for him as he left the elevator, six foot two of muscle leaning nonchalantly against the guardpost in the brown and cream birdstyle of the Osprey. "Commander! We are delighted you will be coming with us."

Mark resisted the urge to comment that he was glad to hear he was preferable to Grant - it didn't seem right, somehow. He was here in a position of authority, not as one of the team. He needed to keep his distance - and he hoped it wouldn't be too unnatural. Dylan was entirely used to looking up to him - figuratively, if not physically. Paula Arkwright had known him as the Eagle, as had Dimitri. The new trainee, the genius mathematician who made the whole second team thing possible, he'd never even met.

"Come this way, please, Commander," Dimitri said, a whole lot more formally, and Mark followed him to a waiting room just around the corner.

His first thought was that they really were the next generation, all ready to go. Three of them plus Dimitri, in full birdstyle. One man short of being a full team. Then, memory of who they were overwrote the impression of the uniforms.

The tall, thin young woman in white and yellow, the Crane, that was Paula. When he'd first met her, she had been Anderson's com-tech. Not even a security agent. Only after she'd been drafted onto a rescue mission had she decided she wanted more than a controller's chair. He knew exactly how she felt.

Dylan, the Raven, wore blue and black - and appeared considerably taller in birdstyle than out of it. Mark suspected the heels of his boots. He had used that trick himself for years. Just sixteen, Dylan was the jump-pilot, the designated pilot, and from things he'd heard, a hot candidate for commander. Mark personally thought that would be a big mistake. G-Force had always kept its pilot right at the bottom of the chain of command, and that was something he thoroughly approved of. There was no way to concentrate on the immediate tactics of combat flying at the same time as looking further ahead.

Dimitri would have been his choice for commander. The engineer had quietly become very competent at everything Mark had seen him asked to do. He would be most surprised if that didn't include making good decisions. He did wonder whether the fact that Dimitri looked more like hired muscle than a highly intelligent, softly spoken young man who always thought before offering an opinion counted against him.

And then there was the fourth team member. Jennifer Linton, fourteen years old, discovered by ISO Oceania a bare six months ago, implanted within a month. The only other person ISO had ever found who came even close to Jason's instinctive brilliance at solving the jump-equations. Five foot three and barely into puberty, Jason had called her 'the Wren' when he'd mentioned they had a new candidate for Force Two. Mark wasn't sure whether that had been a joke based on her size and combat capabilities, or whether it really was the callsign she planned to use. Hopefully there would be more details in the training schedule. He'd yet to do more than glance at it to make sure it had transferred correctly.

"Commander, have you met Jenny?" Dimitri asked him, and the other three swung round from whatever it was they'd been studying.

Good grief, she looked young. Even through the visor, and Mark knew that they were designed to make people look a whole lot older than they were.

She held out a hand, obviously uncertain. "Commander Jarrald - it's an honour, sir."

And then again, keeping his distance only needed to go so far. "Call me Mark. All of you. Unless you need to be formal." He shook her hand solemnly. "That's enough formal for now. Jenny, is it? Jennifer? Jen?"

"Jenny Wren," Paula chuckled. "That's what the Owl calls her, anyway.

The girl smiled ruefully. "I liked that - but Chief Anderson said I couldn't use it, it was too common a phrase and people might make the connection."

"So what did you choose?" Mark asked her.

"I haven't decided yet."

"We'll choose for you, if you like," Dylan put in, his eyes dancing.

"Sure you will," she responded. "And I'll end up as the Ostrich or something. I'll find one, thanks."

The door opened again and Anderson came in. "Your transport is here - Mark, can I have a word?"

"Sure, Chief." He sighed inwardly, wondering whether Chris had said something - but surprised that Anderson hadn't intercepted him sooner, if that was the case. Surely they wouldn't have let him get this close to an active posting again? Surely Chris wouldn't do that to anyone, let alone to him? He hung back as the other four left - Dylan in the lead, followed by Dimitri, young Jenny and Paula bringing up the rear. Pretty much the order he would have expected, if he'd had to guess.

Anderson waited until the door was shut and they were out of earshot, and then put a hand in his pocket, bringing it out closed around something wristwatch-shaped. "I think you should have this. It's the easiest way for you to communicate with your trainees without putting it through the station's network, should you need to."

He nodded, closing his hand round the familiar shape without looking at it. It made a whole lot of sense. Whether or not Anderson was watching to see whether he'd react to it he wasn't sure, but he was determined not to do so. Not even to show the flood of relief that Chris had apparently kept his concerns to himself.

"What do you think of them? First impressions."

"Hardly first impressions for three of them." Mark shrugged. "I don't know, Chief. They don't look like a hand-to-hand combat team to me. I'd be much happier if young North was backup rather than a frontline fighter at his age, and the kid? Tell me she's a good enough pilot that you're planning on her being the one left on the ship. Though Paula's no combat monster either, from what I remember."

"Interesting. I'll look forward to hearing what you have to say in a week." Anderson smiled, and held the door open. "Your transport's leaving from the second level basement. Have a good time, and try to remember just how young Keyop was when the war started."

"Keyop was trained almost from birth. Not pulled from some prep school in Melbourne." Mark took a deep breath and replaced his wristwatch with his bracelet. He still didn't need to look at the fastening, even after all these months. "I'll do my best to be fair, Chief. But my best guess? They're five years off being useful."


	3. Chapter 3

It wasn't until he wheeled the chair out of the elevator and saw the vehicle waiting that he had his first moment of uncertainty. Zero g was going to be all very well, but how the heck was he going to _get_ there? He couldn't even get into the car, not without help. If only this had come a couple of weeks later. Five days wasn't close to enough time for him to have rebuilt significant muscle mass, regardless of how hard he'd pushed himself. He could stand up with a handhold, had managed to stay standing for short periods, but that was about it.

Not to mention that the driver was making muttered comments to the effect that he should have been informed about having a crippled passenger, they had special vehicles for that, and appropriately trained drivers, whatever that meant. All should have been beyond his hearing, but implant enhancements didn't always tell you things you wanted to know. And the enhancements he still had were, pretty much without exception, the less useful ones.

"I'm not allowed to -" the man started up as Mark approached the passenger side door.

"You don't have to." The car door was open. _Please, let this work_. One step, and he could pull himself up into the seat. _Just stand up straight for one step_.

Mark took a deep breath, pushed himself to vertical, and put everything he had into locking his legs straight while he reached for the interior door handle with his right hand and the top of the seat back with his left. From there it was easy. All upper body work, and he'd done one hell of a lot of that over the past few months. Five seconds had him in the passenger seat, utterly determined not to gasp for breath.

"I don't think the chair will fit in the trunk," the driver said, not even to him, but to the team in the back.

"We won't need it," Paula responded. "There will be a chair for Commander Jarrald at the launch site." Her fingers flashed, aimed at Mark. _Sorry, sir_. _I'll see to it_.

Mark considered blowing up. Considered it very, very hard - and only didn't because of the sheer horror on the man's face when his rank was mentioned. Thank goodness it was only an hour's ride out to the launch site. He could stay silent for that long. Let the man sweat. Maybe next time he'd be a little less dismissive of someone in a chair.

He spent the next hour admiring the scenery and concocting, then rejecting, devastating throwaway lines to aim at drivers with no manners. The kids in the back were quiet, probably conversing in sign, though Mark didn't turn round to see. They were about to spend a week in a goldfish bowl. He'd let them have this last hour without being watched. And the coastal road was highly scenic - marshy, very sparsely inhabited. The site they were heading for was used for most of ISO's supply runs, all the conventional rocket launches. Of the space-capable vehicles, only the Phoenix got to use the airfield at the main base, with its standard aircraft-like capabilities. Maybe one day everything would, but for now the fuel costs were prohibitive. He'd been told once how much it cost to run the Phoenix's engines for one minute, and promptly wiped it from his mind. There had been a frightening number of digits involved, but he'd decided that money could not impact on tactical decisions. He had stopped complaining about the proportion of simulations to real test flights, though.

The rocket was visible long before anything else, the traditional shape with nose pointed to the sky. He pointed it out to the others, and then smiled to himself as four birdstyled operatives jostled for a good view between the seats in front of them. They really were still kids.

Ten more minutes brought them to the buildings associated with the launch pad, and the driver pulled up with a barely audible sigh of relief in front of the double doors. A young woman stood there with a wheelchair, a standard hospital issue one which he knew from experience would be heavy, uncomfortable, and horrible to manoeuvre, and she pushed it next to his door as the vehicle stopped.

It wasn't going to help just yet, though. Mark opened the door and considered the drop to the ground. Pulling himself up was one thing. He was quite sure he couldn't lower himself to his feet, stand, and then get into the chair. At least not without the help of Dimitri, who positioned himself next to the door pillar and put up a hand to him.

"Commander?"

"Thank you, Osprey." Mark swung himself round, put one hand on the door handle, the other on Dimitri's shoulder, and lowered himself cautiously to the ground, legs trembling as he asked them to take weight which he really didn't have the muscle to handle, not yet.

Dimitri caught him under the elbow, took the weight, and helped him to sit down, before waving off the driver. "I am sorry about that, Commander. We should have thought and made sure the transportation was more appropriate."

"I had ninety minutes notice that I was coming. You must have had less than that. It's not your fault the man was...awkward." He'd have used stronger language, but the rest of the team were only a couple of yards away, picking up their bags, and he was only too aware just how young Jenny was. "Is my kit in that pile?"

"I have it," Dylan confirmed, swinging a rucksack over each shoulder.

The young woman cleared her throat for attention. "If you have everything, sirs, would you follow me, please?"

* * *

><p>"You are all medically cleared for launch," the base commander told Mark. "Your belongings have been checked and loaded. I regret to say that while there is an elevator up the gantry, the chair will not fit through the hatch. Will you require assistance?"<p>

"Only from us," Dylan put in, and Mark raised an eyebrow at him, suppressing a grin.

"As the Raven says, Colonel. We're good to go. The sooner the better."

Once up at the top of the elevator, it was obvious that there was indeed no way the chair was going through the hatch, which was narrow and six inches above the level of both the gantry and the floor inside the rocket. Mark contemplated the step over the sill, then the six feet to the nearest launch seat with support available only on one side, and grimaced. He hated being like this. He was _so_ looking forward to a week in freefall.

"Can I help?" Dimitri asked, somewhat uncertainly, and Mark nodded reluctantly.

"I need a shoulder. Or two."

Dylan edged past him through the hatch, and reached back through. "Not the easiest. 'Mitri, can you help him up?"

"Don't you start talking like I'm not here!" Mark snapped.

"Sorry, Commander, I didn't mean...can you stand up?"

"Give me your hand." Mark reached out left-handed, pushed himself up from the chair with the right, and grabbed for support. He might have made it, had it been the first time today he'd asked himself to do the impossible. It was the third, and the spring had gone. Dimitri saved his blushes, hauling him to vertical, but he was done and they had to know it. It was with deep embarrassment that he reached through the hatch and dropped his arm round Dylan's shoulders, letting the two of them half drag, half lift him over the sill and to the nearest launch seat. He busied himself with the restraining straps, not looking up, until he felt a helmet put into his hands.

"They want you to wear this. Sorry, Commander." Paula sounded stricken, and he considered the item in some confusion. It was only a helmet, after all. What, she thought he'd freak at the thought of wearing something without a raptor visor? Almost a year of no longer being who he had been, and it wasn't an issue.

"I'll live. Everyone done this before?"

It was a courtesy question, of course. He knew full well that three of them had, and was equally sure that young Linton hadn't. The nervous edge in her 'no' only confirmed it.

"Don't worry. It's just like the centrifuge."

"You'll be fine," Paula added reassuringly. It had to be more than strange for her, presented with a team-mate who was what, seven years younger than her? Eight? Mark couldn't remember exactly how old Paula was, but he knew she was a similar age to him. This team was a terrible hotch-potch of different ages and experiences, and getting them to pull together would be a feat in itself. He was already seeing a split right down the middle between the sexes. Four was not a good number. This team badly needed a fifth member, a good, all-round generalist. Preferably a leader, certainly a serious fighter. Quite where they'd find one, he didn't know - but it couldn't be that hard. They had the three really rare requirements now. If only they'd had four combat monsters, and been in need of a jump-pilot who could mind the ship.

His attention was caught by the screen lighting up, and the intercom crackling. "This is your pilot speaking. The weather on Comsat Three is clear and cold, and the time there is fourteen fifty-five. Just like it is here. We launch in five minutes and our estimated flight time is three hours. If you have any questions, ask now, using the button on the arm of your seat."

"Weather?" whispered Jenny.

"He's joking."

"I knew that." Her voice shook, and Paula reached out and squeezed her gloved hand. "You okay?"

"I'd better be, hadn't I? Routine rocket launch to a satellite?"

"Routine's always worse," he told her. "Were you nervous first time, Crane?"

Paula grinned. "My first launch? I'd never even ridden a centrifuge and I got drafted onto an emergency rescue flight - they needed a jump-communicator. I had no idea what was going on, and the Condor had us doing pre-flight checks at breakneck speed. I didn't have time to get nervous."

"That was my first full launch too," Dimitri said. "They did not have training facilities on the satellites then. Although I have been to ComSat Three since."

"Mine was going to the Rigan Space Academy," Dylan said.

"Mine too." Mark smiled, remembering. Man, that had been a long time ago. And he'd been _way_ too arrogant to be nervous.

The cabin vibrated around them, and there was the deep rumble of engine noise. Mark shifted in his seat - one thing he did remember from that first launch was sitting on a wrinkle of cloth, and being deeply uncomfortable all the way up. He'd had a most interesting shaped bruise there afterwards, too. He wanted to make quite sure he didn't do that again. The others wouldn't have that problem, of course - birdstyle fit much better than real clothes ever could.

The noise built to a shattering roar, and then there was slow movement upwards, acceleration building inexorably to the point of discomfort. Or what would have been discomfort if it hadn't been pure, simple heaven. Flight, again. And nothing else mattered.

* * *

><p>"You may now unfasten your seatbelts," the pilot's voice said over the intercom, as the acceleration died away to near nothing. "Gravity is low, but non-zero. If you do not have zero g experience, we recommend you stay in your seats. There are bags under the chair. Please use them, if you need to."<p>

"What...?" whispered Jenny.

"If you think you're going to get sick," Paula told her. "Most people do, first time. How are you feeling?"

She flushed, visible even under the helmet. "Awful."

Mark reached under his seat and gave her the bag. "Don't worry about it. It's normal." He undid his seatbelt and shifted experimentally. Micro-gravity, just enough not to get stuck floating in the centre of the cabin. Dylan and Dimitri were already up at what was in gravity the top of one wall, peering through the only window in here. Mark pushed himself towards them, stopping himself with one hand on the ceiling.

"Is she okay?" Dylan asked, almost silently.

He shook his head, as unmistakeable sounds filled the air of the cabin, followed by Paula comforting her team-mate. "She will be. You never got sick?"

Dylan grinned cheerfully back at him.

"Spot the pilot." It had been true for him, too, and still was. He felt better already. Just being able to move freely around the cabin was wonderful - there was some gravity, but sufficiently little that he could hold himself effortlessly against the ceiling with one hand on one of the many handles.

"Is that it?" Dylan asked, and he squinted through the porthole at the curve of the earth below them, and above it, in the blackness of space, at least three points of light he could identify as artificial.

"Is what what?"

"ComSat Three. Up at eleven o'clock."

"I doubt it. Should be directly ahead of us, unless they're planning one hell of a deceleration burn. This is a supply shuttle, not a warship."

"More's the pity."

"Patience, Raven."

Dylan sighed. "I know, I know. But ... it's frustrating. Sorry, Commander."

Mark knew he was thinking of the red and silver ship, still nameless, sitting deep in the hangars beneath ISO. He also agreed with whoever had made the decision that bringing it up to spend a week parked very visibly outside ComSat Three would have been a particularly stupid idea. And G-Force had better things to do than play taxi with the Phoenix, had they even been available. Much more sensible to catch a lift on the regular supply run and crew change, even if it was boring and prosaic compared with what Force Two hoped they would be used to one day soon.

"Firing engines in two minutes," came over the speaker. "Please return to your seats and strap in."

Mark glanced down, spotted his line back to his seat, and pushed easily away from the ceiling, building a slight twist into his movement. Everything was going to be hands-first for him, at least until he'd done some practising in private and figured out just how much pushing off and catching himself his legs could manage right now. He drifted gently down towards the chair, caught the handle on the top of it with both hands, and pulled himself back into the seat.

"How are you feeling now?" he asked the girl alongside him, tense against the straps and an unfortunate shade of pale green.

"A bit better," she managed, her eyes still shut.

"Really?"

She forced the shadow of a grin. "Yes, Commander."

"If it's no better by the time they've unloaded and are ready for the return, you're going back down with them. I won't ask anyone to go through a week of spacesickness."

The eyes opened in raw horror. "No! I can do it."

"It's not the end of the world if you can't."

"The end of Force Two for me, though. I'm not giving up on it that easy."

_Actually, no_, Mark thought, but left it. There'd be a medic on the station to make the decision. And in two hours, young Jenny would either be coping or she wouldn't.

* * *

><p>He'd not realised the medic would be someone he'd recognise. The man had been one of Chris Johnson's assistants in black section a couple of years back, at a time when Mark had thought of doctors as something other people needed. He'd certainly never spoken to him, and had no idea what the initial in the 'T. Adamson' on his nametag stood for. But still, he was quite sure that the other knew just who he was. Which was a good thing, and also accounted for the fact that the man looked at him as if he'd seen a ghost.<p>

"Commander," the doctor said carefully as Mark replaced Dylan in his tiny office. "I was...surprised...to see you here."

_Even more surprised to read my medical records, I'll bet_. Mark simply caught hold of one of the handles, holding himself casually against the wall. "Major Grant was taken ill at the last moment."

"So I understand." The corner of his mouth twitched - this man was not comfortable with the situation. "Commander -"

"Call me Mark."

"And I'm Tim." He didn't noticeably relax. "Mark, by rights I should give you this." He held up a Velcro-backed badge, the sort that everyone wore on a freefall station. The poster on the wall explained the colours, but Mark knew them by heart anyway. They were universal across the entire Federation of Peaceful Planets. Red for newbies. Blue for competent, but not expert. Green for someone who knew exactly what they were doing, who could safely be left to get themself to safety even in an emergency. Gold for the experts, those expected to help others. The badge the doctor was holding was black. Medically incapable, needs help at all times.

After a day on a Rigan station, he'd been assigned green. Two days after that, gold. Hell, even _Jason_ wore green, and could have worn gold if he'd been prepared to stay in freefall long enough to take the extra training.

"I don't want to. But -"

"You have to follow regulations," Mark said wearily. "You and everyone else." _So I get treated as an idiot. Again._

The doctor held his hand up. "Eagle. Are you still competent in zero g?"

"Yes." _And that is _all_ you're getting. Don't even think of trying to get me to beg, because I still have some pride left._

The doctor simply nodded, his face clearing, and he reached into a green bag Velcroed to the wall behind him and pulled out a second badge. And handed Mark both of them.

"I can't give you gold - based on your medical record, you're not up to helping in an emergency. If you had to hold onto someone, you're out of useful limbs."

Mark nodded slowly.

"But you deserve better than being treated as helpless. If you find you need help, you've got the black badge there. I don't think you will. You've got coordination to spare, even if your legs don't work quite how you'd like."

Mark pocketed the black badge and attached the other to the appropriate slot on his jumpsuit, his eyes never leaving the other. "Thank you."

"And then there's young Jennifer."

Mark grimaced. "How's she doing?"

"Not well. I'll be honest, Commander. I think she's going to be one of those who can't adjust to freefall. But she's damned determined. She wants to stay. I know the limitations you folks have on drugs - but is it going to matter, right now? Because I can give her something to keep her from throwing up - and my personal advice would be that she stays and gets used to handling herself in zero g."

"You can make her feel fine?"

"No. Just keep things from getting messy."

_Lovely image_. Mark considered, then nodded and raised his bracelet to his mouth. "Uh - Crane, can you bring your colleague back to the medical office?" The kid needed a callsign of some sort, right now, even if it was the Ostrich. This was impractical - and regardless of how secure the station was, he was not getting them into the habit of using real names over comm channels.

"On our way," Paula's voice responded, and he lowered his arm, realising belatedly that he'd just used the bracelet for the first time since he'd quit. Well, at least the radio still worked. It wasn't like any of the other functionality was going to matter.

Two minutes later and there was a tap at the door, followed by Paula entering, towing a shaky, green-faced Jenny. Mark had to admit, the doctor had a point. She really did not look good. This was obviously something more than the standard throwing-up almost everyone did first time in freefall.

"Shall I...?" Paula queried.

"You can go back. Thank you." Mark took over her grip on Jenny's arm and steered the girl fully into the tiny room, to face the doctor. He didn't leave, though. He wanted it clear that this was not optional.

"I've recommended that I give you something to help," Adamson said bluntly. "It won't make you feel a whole lot better. It will keep you from throwing up."

Jenny swallowed desperately. "I can't take drugs."

"Yes, you can." Mark resisted the urge to either sympathise or tell her to get on with it already, and stayed detached. "Right now, and until you're active, it makes no difference. You're hardly going to have to go through jump."

"They'll ditch me if I can't function in freefall without drugs."

"Which is why you're going to take them now." Mark gestured to the doctor, who made a show of crossing to the drugs cabinet on what he was currently thinking of as the ceiling. "If you can learn the moves while feeling rough, that's good enough. In a fight, if you throw up, it happens. But we're not spending a week training in vomit. You take the drugs or you go home."

Jenny swallowed desperately, met his eyes, and whispered, "Yes," pulling off her right glove, and Mark pushed away to give her some space.

* * *

><p>"You'll need me to repeat this every day," the doctor told her as he finished giving the injection. "I want you here at seventeen hundred hours. Any side-effects, or if the nausea gets worse, you come see me right away. Commander, I trust you'll keep an eye on her."<p>

"Absolutely." Mark decided not to ask what else the man thought he was here for. As a sop to his ego, probably. "Come on, kid. You have ten minutes to come up with a codename, or it's 'Ostrich' for the rest of the week."

Jenny didn't answer, still pale and miserable, but she did follow, pushing blindly for the door. She hit it, not as hard as she would have done if Mark hadn't caught her and swung much of her momentum towards himself.

"Steady there, kid."

"Don't call me that!" It was obviously reflex, and she followed it with a gasp. "Commander...I didn't mean..."

"No offence taken. You need to take it easy until the drugs work." Mark held up a hand, forestalling any protest. "Now, like the doc just pointed out to me, I don't have any limbs to spare for towing. You're going to have to follow."

He proceeded at a slow hand-over-hand pace down the side rail of the corridor to the quarters they'd been assigned. Second level, inner ring, spoke five. They approached it going outwards from the centre of the station along one of the spokes - like other essential systems, the medical section was located close to the hub. Their quarters were directly opposite the end of the corridor, at a point where the spoke terminated and four other corridors split off from it. Two going round the inner hub, one up to the first level and one down to the third. The hatch was shut, as was required practice on a space station. Should anything happen to the integrity of the corridors, each accommodation unit was self-contained, with its own airlock and emergency air system. You'd not survive long in there, but long enough for rescue to arrive from Earth.

The lieutenant who'd shown them here had been very clear on the rules - and on how strictly they were enforced. Doors were not to be left open, and if they were, alarms would go off in central control. In fact, every open door showed up as a red light on a permanently manned console. _And monitoring that must be one dull job_, Mark had thought and not said. A job for which a crippled, totally reliable, ex-security agent could well be considered ideal, with zero g as a sweetener. _No thanks_.

He reached the junction and pushed across the gap to the hatch, punching in their access code and then bracing himself with one arm as best he could to lever the circular hatch open with the other. It was obviously intended that you'd use both hands and push with your legs. Maybe by the end of the week he'd be able to manage it.

He finally got the door mostly open and floated inside, catching one of the bars which criss-crossed the central open space. It wasn't large, though in zero g considerations were different, with volume suddenly mattering much more than floor area. There was a circular window in the centre of the wall opposite the hatch with a view mostly taken up by the blank wall of another part of the station twenty feet away, and stars visible beyond it. Around that, oriented as though the hatch were in the floor and the window the ceiling, were eight doors, six sleeping cubicles and two bathrooms. The lieutenant had commented on that, too, with one eye on Jenny. Real zero g personnel didn't need so many bathrooms. And the whole team had stiffened.

Three heads appeared as he came in, from separate doors.

"You assigned sleeping quarters?"

"Senior officer's quarters is that one," Dimitri pointed to the door next to his own. "It is larger, and contains the emergency equipment. We thought Jenny should go over here."

The second door he indicated was adjacent to one of the bathrooms, and Mark nodded. "That'll do fine." He turned back to the entrance to see Jenny hesitating at the end of the rail, eyeing the seven foot gap in front of her with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

"Come on, Jen," Paula encouraged from behind him. "You can do it."

She flushed, a bizarre shade against her green pallor. "I'm going to throw up if I let go."

"With that drug in you? Not a chance." Mark hardened his tone. "You've got twenty seconds until the door alarm goes off. If that happens, you're going back down."

Her eyes narrowed in determination, she gathered her legs under her, and Mark decided that at this point letting her make her own mistakes would be downright cruel.

"Hold it - you don't need a lot of momentum. Gentle and smooth. No force."

She half nodded, fixed her eyes on him, and pushed off. Not quite straight, but close enough. Mark caught her easily one-handed, with his other arm hooked round the pole, and slowed her until she could catch onto it alongside him.

"Not bad. Paula, would you get the hatch?" As the door swung shut with a solid thump, he pointed to the interior door which Dimitri had indicated. "That's your cubicle. Best thing for you right now is rest. Do you think you can cope alone?"

"Yes." There was raw determination in the tone, and she reached out for the doorhandle, pushing off awkwardly and clearly forgetting the 'no force' advice. She hit the door with an audible crunch, and just hung there, clinging to the handle and breathing raggedly. Mark knew the sound of someone close to the end of their tether. He also considered it not his job to comfort her, and was glad to see that her team-mates felt the same way. Not his job. Theirs.

Dylan caught her from one side, Dimitri from the other, Paula opened the door wide, and as they guided her into the limited privacy of her own cubicle Mark retreated into his own. He could still hear every word, of course.

"You don't have to do this, Jen." That was Paula. "Believe me, space-sickness won't rule you out."

"I don't need any more negatives next to my name." It was close to a sob.

"You've got a positive nobody else has." Dylan, this time. "They need you, kid. Plus, gravity generators on our combat craft? This isn't something you'll have to face often. Hell, if you're the one minding the ship, it isn't something you'll have to face at all. Say the word. Commander Jarrald will have you on that shuttle inside five minutes."

"I know he will! I want to prove I can do this! That I'm not just here because of the maths. I don't want to be a liability."

"You're not," Dimitri told her, but it lacked conviction. Dimitri had seen G-Force in action. He had to know just how good they were. Just how far all the trainees had to go.

"I don't even have a callsign -"

"Kestrel," Dylan told her. "Now quit with the self-pity. Are you staying or going? We'll back you up either way, but I for one am not going to listen to you whining all week."

Mark smiled ruefully. Young, confident, arguing, pulling one another up...he remembered G-Force being like that. Back before the first mission he'd commanded, back when there wasn't an attack a week. When it had all been new and bright, and he'd had the world at his feet and his team around him ready to back him to the hilt. He missed it dreadfully.

"Dylan's right," Paula was saying. "Now, get some rest and wait for the drugs to kick in properly. You've got your bracelet if you need us."

He guessed she had nodded, because there were sounds of the other three backing out of the cubicle, and then the door closing softly. Belatedly, he paid attention to the tiny cubicle which was his for the next week - larger than the others, Dimitri had said. His wardrobe back at ISO was bigger than this. It seemed strange to economise on space like this in the quarters given the vast lengths of corridors, but he guessed it was deliberate. Most people training here were doing so in preparation for working on much smaller stations, so it only made sense to see how they reacted to living with their future colleagues in close quarters. It wasn't for him, though. A sleeping bag complete with elastic straps to give some vague illusion of gravity on the wall opposite the door, and apart from that, a locker for the emergency equipment which Dimitri had mentioned, and a whole lot of nets, straps and pockets to secure his belongings. Someone had hooked his rucksack onto one of the straps, and he saw no need to unpack it right now. No, it was time to go do something useful.

He made a quick scan of their patches as he closed his door behind him. Paula was wearing blue, while Dylan and Dimitri both sported the gold badges of the ultra-competent. Mark pushed his frustration way down and cleared his throat deliberately. "If you three are done stargazing, I'd like to check out the training space we've been allocated."

"Which way?" Dylan queried once they were out of the room, shutting the hatch behind them with a solid clunk.

Mark handed him the map he'd been given, and waited, holding to the rail on the opposite side of the corridor. Behind the visor, Dylan's face was unreadable, but the body language was a picture as he glanced down one corridor after another, hoping for a clue. Mark wasn't going to give him one, but it was only a few seconds until Dimitri and Paula were looking over his shoulders, one on each side. Dylan looked from side to side ruefully, then gave up the pretence.

"Well, I know it's not straight on - apart from that, I haven't a clue. Rigan stations are a lot more obvious

"And a lot smaller?" Mark suggested. He'd been astonished by the scale and complexity of this one. Five levels, each consisting of a hub, with a series of spokes leading out to an inner ring, and then a second set going to an outer ring. Beyond that, the third level had a few extra spokes going still further out, with warning flashes all over the map that they were incomplete, unpressurised, and should not be accessed. Hundreds of individual rooms and a similar number of corridors, all with bulkhead doors at regular intervals; a safety feature to ensure that any depressurisation was strictly limited, with the side-effect that it was impossible to see which corridors were curved and which straight. And the incomplete third ring suggested that they were still expanding this place. He wasn't entirely sure of the details, but his briefing had suggested zero-g manufacturing was done here in a big way, the station supporting not only its own ISO staff and visitors like Force Two using it for training purposes, but also several dozen engineers and specialists in microgravity techniques from a range of civilian companies. His suspicion was that at least some of what was made over on the far side of the station was of a seriously classified nature. Certainly the map was vague at best as to what many of the laboratory units were for. He couldn't believe they were all associated with communications, though.

Paula laughed. "What we need is a 'this way up' sign."

"I think you have missed the point of freefall training," Dimitri told her seriously. "There is no 'up'."

"No, but there's still a map orientation. And a simpler solution." Paula looked beyond him, and raised her voice. "Excuse me - which way to Hold B?"

"Corridor behind you," a cheerful voice replied in an accent Mark couldn't begin to identify. "Enjoy your stay."

"Thanks!" Paula called, as Dylan rapidly oriented his map, slapping it against the door to their quarters.

"So, how do we identify it next time?"

"Hinges," Dimitri told him.

Dylan grinned and nodded, and Paula whipped out a pencil and wrote 'HINGES' across the bottom of the plan, with an arrow to their door.

"Well," said Mark finally, "basic navigation wasn't on this week's list of activities, but since you've volunteered...Raven, would you lead the way?"


	4. Chapter 4

Hold B was a large open space for a space station, one of the few structures on the incomplete third ring, roughly quarter of a turn from their quarters and on the third level. It was a bare, windowless, off-white cube eighty feet on a side, the only contents an assortment of bars, boxes and other awkwardly shaped objects strapped to one wall. Dylan and Dimitri would, he hoped, get to the point of being able to use them offensively. Paula needed to get to the point where she thought in three dimensions rather than two, and could hide behind them effectively. Young Jenny - well, he hoped the drug would help enough that she could train as part of the team. If not, then certain aspects of this week were going to be severely curtailed. The major aim was to get them the basis of a working four man whirlwind pyramid. If she couldn't cope - well, that would be a complete non-starter.

Paula was reading the safety instructions posted next to the door. Dimitri was examining the bars and boxes. Dylan was flipping merrily from one wall to another, arms extended, legs piked. None of them were watching him, and he had to try sometime. Mark brought his legs under him, extended his arms, and pushed away from the wall.

There wasn't much force there - he'd known that. No snap at all, and only a little speed. But he did end up moving in a straight line, and managed something approaching a decent flight position.

Stopping was another matter altogether. Even leaving himself what he thought was an age, tucking and spinning to come in feet first took him so long that he was on top of the wall with no time to prepare. His legs crumpled under him, and he was forced to twist and take the impact on the back of his left shoulder, as if he'd been thrown while sparring.

That, of course, wasn't silent. Mark recovered his orientation to find three pairs of eyes on him. "Ouch," he said mildly.

"Are you hurt?" Dimitri asked him.

He shook his head. A bruised ego, that was all. And the realisation that, even in zero g, he was still very much hands-only for the moment.

* * *

><p>Drinking through a straw. Eating food chosen based on how well it stuck together, not how good it tasted. Having to tie his hair back if he wasn't to look like a bad hair day from the nineteen-eighties. Sleeping in a bag, with elastic straps the only semblance of weight. Zero g discipline: keeping everything strapped down, or inside something else. Unless you were about to use it again, in which case you could happily leave it floating. It was a long time since he'd used it, as a fourteen year old human at the Rigan Space Academy, on a month's training course on one of their stations. It came back, though, the intervening years melting away. Only the fact that he was on the sidelines, watching others train, commenting, praising, criticising, reminded him that he was older now. That what the other four were working towards lay in his past, not his future.<p>

They improved, slowly. Even the little one was out there from the following day, still green, still dizzy, still needing a whole lot of help. Black badged, and likely to stay that way. Even so, they had to learn to build that pyramid, and they did. Paula and Dimitri on the bottom level. Dylan, to his obvious embarrassment, on their shoulders - he was four inches shorter than she was, what did he expect? And young Jenny, now the Kestrel, on the top. After two days, they could build it quickly and easily. Whether they could do it planet-side was a different matter, but he hoped that maybe Jenny functioning better would offset the additional problems caused by gravity. At the very least, they had a basis to work from.

Spinning was another matter entirely. Quite apart from the issue that their top man was suffering from vertigo, a four-man configuration was intrinsically unstable. Even G-Force had struggled with it, despite their years of experience. Mark decided to let his trainees get good and stable, confident, working together without effort, before moving on. Not to push the pyramid too much, but to have them work on other things: flight trajectories, weapons use in zero g, absorbing a large amount of momentum without doing themselves damage.

It was a good theory, but on their fourth morning there was a clearing of throats as he came into the hold, a few minutes after the rest of them, as he had been checking in with the station commander.

"Commander," Dylan said formally. "Whirlwind pyramid. We'd like to try the real thing today."

Mark looked from face to face. If this was anything other than a group decision, chances were the team was a non-starter. Were the men sick and tired of being held back by the women? Because there was no question, that was what was happening here. Both Dylan and Dimitri were far more adept than Paula, even if she had been given the green badge yesterday. Jenny wasn't even on the same page.

Dimitri was indeed alongside his colleague, nodding in emphasis. But the other two were right there as well, Paula with her face set in a look of pure determination, and Jenny wearing an expression of desperate fervour which said more than words ever could how badly she wanted to be able to do this.

"Sure," he said casually. "All warmed up?"

Four heads nodded.

"Then build your pyramid."

Even yesterday morning, this would have involved discussion, compromise and adjustment. Not any more. Dimitri hit his mark perfectly, caught Paula when she missed fractionally and pulled her back into line. Dylan was already in flight as the two of them stood up straight, and as they caught his ankles and killed his momentum, Jenny was already heading for his shoulders.

She'd hit it perfectly this time, and all Dylan had to do was reach up and steady her as she straightened out from the somersault above his head. The grin of success was obvious even under the grey-green visor.

"Good," he said, still keeping it casual. "Now, Kestrel, Raven, arms out, wings stiff. You two have to provide all the stability. Crane, Osprey, the rest is up to you. Keep it steady. Don't even try to put any speed into it until you feel the gyroscopic effect."

_That's the theory, anyway_. Mark held onto a strap near the door and watched attempt after attempt end in dismal failure. Gyroscopic effect - who had he been kidding? All the teamwork was gone. No coordination, no solidarity. He suggested one thing and another fell apart. The base pair seemed incapable of rotating as a single unit. Dylan, of standing straight and stiff, transmitting all that rotation directly to the girl on his shoulders. Jenny herself was getting whiter by the attempt, and, ten minutes earlier than the session should have finished, he called a halt.

"I think we need to discuss this some more. Raven, Osprey, can you collect five meals from the messhall and bring them back to our quarters?"

"Make that four," Jenny groaned.

"Five," he restated. "We'll get you a window to look out of, and you'll feel a lot better." That was what Jason always did, anyway. He guessed it must work at least somewhat.

Once back in their quarters, Jenny clung to the nearest bar to the window, eyes locked on the distant stars. Paula detransmuted, cast a desperate look in Mark's direction, and then went to the girl.

"Come on, Jen. Chin up. You're doing great."

"God, I want to throw up."

"Drugs won't let you, you know that. Let's get your helmet off."

Jenny said nothing, arms and legs wrapped round the pole, and Paula undid the helmet for her, lifting it off to reveal brown hair damp with sweat.

"You should have said you were struggling."

"I can't _be_ struggling. Don't you get it? I have to be able to cope or I'm out."

"You're doing fine."

"I'm a complete disaster. We tried that what, fifteen times? I didn't get it right once."

"And neither did anyone else." Mark had been flicking through the training schedule, half looking for inspiration, half giving the impression of politely not listening which was so essential in a shared room this small. But this was enough wailing for one day.

"You have a problem with this move as a team - and with good reason, it's _hard_. G-Force have practised whirlwind pyramid hundreds, thousands of times. They still practise it." He just barely caught himself before he said 'we'. "You've tried fifteen times, and they were all awful. It needs work. Now, you need to get your balance back, eat something, and we'll discuss alternative ways of approaching it."

Dylan and Dimitri chose that moment to arrive, bearing flasks of soup and what the station referred to as 'bread', though it had the consistency of foam rubber - and a lot of the taste. Even he found it hard to swallow the stuff, though he certainly wasn't going to say so.

Dylan passed out food as he floated through the room, then stopped with one hand against the window, peering into Jenny's face. "You look like hell. Want me to call the doc?"

"There's nothing more he can do."

He patted her arm sympathetically, and gave her just the soup. "Carrot. It's orange, anyway. Give it a try."

"I'm never going to be hungry again."

"Sure you will," Dimitri assured her. "For now, just have a little."

"I know, I know. I'll feel worse without it." She shifted her position on the pole so she could get both hands on the flask and extrude the inbuilt straw, and Mark decided that a change in subject would be no bad thing.

"This morning didn't go so well. To be blunt, it was a mess. Maybe we should leave it a couple of days."

"No," said Dimitri. "We need practice. If we leave it for two days, we will have only one day left here."

"Might be simpler in gravity," Dylan mumbled around a mouthful of bread.

"Harder." Mark looked from face to face, to Jenny's back. "Four's a horrible configuration. Maybe you should work on it as a three for a while."

"No!" The kid was nothing if not determined, he'd give her that. "I can do it. Commander, let me try again. Please."

"It's not just you, though. The main problem is the lack of rigidity in the pyramid below you."

Paula flushed at that, and Dylan looked downright affronted. Regardless, Mark continued. "There's no point in carrying on as you are. I'll take suggestions."

"How do we make it more rigid?" Paula asked.

"Two up, two down?" Dylan was still talking round the bread, though the rest of them appeared to have given up on eating.

"That's not going to help. Or work." Mark made a point of continuing to drink the soup, which was surprisingly good. "If two and two worked better, that's what we'd use. It needs a singleton on top, or it splits apart."

"You're saying we need five," Dylan stated.

"Five or three, yes."

"Commander?" asked Dimitri, and there was a hesitation in his voice which snapped Mark to full attention, "could you stand in there? Be the fifth man for us? It was your position in the formation, I believe."

_Second row, on the Owl's shoulders_... For a moment, the memory was physical, so sharp it hurt. Then it was replaced with practical considerations. It was zero g, and his legs were working much better than he would have believed possible even three days ago. But it was a long way from being able to catch himself without crumpling to whirlwind pyramid with four implanted, transmuted novices. He said nothing, waiting. If they could see the potential problems, it might be worth a try.

"Mark's a fair bit taller than me," Dylan said. "But then, 'Mitri's taller than Paula is. And we've got to face it, any fifth member we get is going to be taller than I am."

"No helmet," Paula said worriedly.

"No?" Dylan frowned. "But can't you...I mean, I presumed..."

"That I can transmute any time I want?" Mark fought down the urge to snap, and simply said, "No. I can't."

He looked round their faces; four people struggling not to ask one question. He had, he realised, said too much already. He was wearing a bracelet but unable to use its main function. That ruled out some sort of simple spinal injury, and yet he was in a wheelchair back on Earth. There was raw shock on the faces of the two more experienced, concern on Dylan's, and simple confusion on Jenny's. And all of them would, if he didn't clear this up right now, end up assuming the worst.

"My implant failed."

Paula went white. Maybe that hadn't been such a good way to clear things up.

"_Failed_?" Dylan asked, much too loud, and winced. "Sorry, Commander. Didn't mean to ask a personal question."

"But you want to know what happened to me."

"I'd like to know if these things have a limited life expectancy," Dylan said, more quietly.

"No."

"But you said it failed!"

"Dylan!" Paula moaned, flushing with embarrassment.

"My implant failed because it was damaged a long, long time ago," Mark told them simply. "I grew, it split. All my neural functions went through it, all the time. That wasn't something it was designed for. Part of it burnt out, most of the rest had to be disabled. But the major problem was that some of my neural functions didn't reroute themselves properly until very recently." He glanced around. Fascinated horror on every face. "So...you want to know what my implant doesn't do any more? Pop quiz time. Tell me how it should work. Dylan, you can start."

Four jaws dropped, and Dylan's "um" told him he'd had the desired effect.

"I'm serious. You lot need to learn to think on your feet."

"Okay...first, there are two implants, not one." Dylan locked eyes with him, seeking approval, and Mark kept his face expressionless. "But only one has a power supply. That's the one which handles -"

"Start with the other one." Mark knew he was making the other uncomfortable, but frankly the kid deserved it, pushing for personal information like that.

"Top implant." Dylan indicated just below the base of his skull at the back of his neck. "Deals with the low level stuff, which doesn't need extra power. Things like keeping the chemical balance right for jump, extra sensitive hearing, stuff like that. Um..."

He was clearly running dry, and Mark took pity. "That's about right. Paula, tell me about the other implant."

She'd known him a whole lot longer than Dylan had. Long enough to have been thinking about her answer. "Half an inch lower. Deals with everything that needs more power than the body can provide in real time. All the jump interfaces, generating the field for transmutation, enhanced healing, speed and endurance."

"That's enough." Mark saw the other two relax, and forced himself not to smile. "And what I've principally lost is the power reservoir. I don't have an energy reserve to call on for transmutation. Or strength, or speed, or anything else. But the old physical damage was what triggered all the neural problems." He stopped there. He had no desire to relive the sheer terror of his body randomly disobeying him, let alone months of paralysis, and besides, Jenny looked terrified enough already.

"What about us?" she asked.

"You have undamaged, normally functioning implants, and were checked for my problem the moment Dr Johnson figured out what to look for." Mark sighed. "I got unlucky, mostly because I was implanted at four years old. That's all there is to it."

"Very recently, you said." Dylan frowned. "And neural...that sim flight?"

"Triggered something." Mark smiled wryly. "I told you I owed you one. My nervous system works just fine now. But the power system in the second implant is still completely disabled, and I have a set of leg muscles I haven't used in months."

"Both of those can be put right," Dimitri said slowly. "You can go back."

"To G-Force? No. I'd never catch up again." _Even discarding the fact that they'd never trust me again after I walked out. And that I've been told in words of one syllable that I'm no longer one of them_.

"To us!" Paula exclaimed, then clamped a hand over her own mouth as if to retrieve the exclamation. "I'm sorry, Commander. After what you've done, you wouldn't want it. But man, could we use you."

"No, you couldn't." Mark knew he had to nip this in the bud right now, and his voice came out so harsh that all four of them jumped. "You need someone who can fight. I'm a jump-pilot and a fast jet pilot, and you have both those already."

"But for now..." Jenny hesitated and carried on, "just for the pyramid? It's not like we're going fast."

The other three were nodding, and Mark took a deep breath. Whirlwind pyramid again, after all this time. "We'll give it a try."

* * *

><p>It wasn't the same. It was never going to be the same, since he had no wings and barely enough muscle to lock his legs out. But he could provide extra stability. A solid platform for young Jenny to balance on. A vertical point of reference for Dylan to lock against and stabilise. And with a much more rigid triangle above them, the two on the base found new coordination. Determined, synchronised movements, and suddenly the whole structure was spinning as one entity, picking up speed, and it was glorious.<p>

Briefly glorious. There was a yelp from above him, and the stresses were suddenly completely wrong, before the whole thing collapsed and the momentum spun them off in different directions. He had just enough time to tuck his head in before he hit the wall hard, spinning wildly. The first impact was on his left side, hard enough to hurt. The spinning didn't stop, he had no idea where he was, and only hoped it wasn't about to be among the poles and crates.

Hands caught him from either side and he felt the spinning slow, then stop. Mark uncurled and let himself be guided to a handhold on the wall.

"Sorry!" That was Paula, close to a wail.

"You weren't kidding about the gyroscopic effect." Dylan.

"Commander?" Dimitri, concerned.

Mark opened his eyes and felt his left elbow gingerly. "Well, it worked. Not such a good idea, though."

"Indeed not. Commander, can you move your arm?"

He did so, flexing his wrist and fingers for good measure. "I'm fine. How's Jenny?"

"That was great!" he heard from the other side of the hold. Enthusiasm, for the first time since they'd arrived.

"I guess we were spinning fast enough to count as gravity," Dylan muttered, and Dimitri smothered a laugh.

"I heard that!"

"Okay, enough." Mark straightened out and looked around. Delight on every face. Well worth a bruised elbow. "Do you think you can translate it to a four now you've felt how it should go? Because me doing this out of birdstyle is a seriously bad idea."

"I didn't think it would go so fast," Paula said.

Mark was forced to laugh. "Fast? That? A five-man going flat out is a _weapon_. Don't forget that." And he missed it so darn _much_. He looked round the room, everyone else in birdstyle, and briefly had to fight for self-control.

Could they fix the implant, once he was fit again? Given that he had no chance of going back on G-Force, would they even want to? He'd never wanted to run base control, and G-Force had no need of a trainer, but these kids...well, there was no point his worrying about it now. For the time being, he was their trainer, and while birdstyle would have been more than useful, he didn't have it. You used what you had, instead of wishing for what you didn't.

"Now, then. You've felt what it should be like. Hold that feeling, and let's take another look at that four-man pyramid. Dylan, this is down to you. You've got to keep the thing stable."


	5. Chapter 5

It would have been nice had that been an instant fix. No such luck. And, that evening, analysing the films at half speed on the four inch screen in his cubicle, he finally found out what the problem was. Young North had a huge helping of natural talent, but, Mark was forced to recognise, his technique wasn't all it should have been, and he'd been getting away with murder. There was only one thing to do. Mark took him right back to basics, to landing properly, to holding every position rather than lurching from start to end of a move. And Dylan _hated_ it. The next two days were spent with frustration written all across his face, and Mark suspected that only rigid self-control, and residual respect for the Eagle, kept him civil. Quite what would have happened if Grant had been in charge didn't bear thinking about. Half speed was not Dylan North's style - and it showed up deficiencies which simply should not have been there.

He was prepared to work, though. However much he obviously loathed it, however many envious glances he cast across the hold to where Dimitri and Paula were working on pushing their speed up as far as they could, he stuck at it. And, on the morning of the third day, Mark watched him running smoothly through a basic move at half speed, every movement precise and perfect, nothing on his face but concentration, and took pity on him.

"That's much better. Go back to full speed for a while - and no shortcuts!"

Dylan's broad grin was answer enough, and Mark turned to Jenny. The kid was still thoroughly uncomfortable with freefall, still being drugged on a daily basis, but she was learning to work with it, and now she needed to be pushed. Mark kept half an eye on Dylan in case the bad habits should return, and encouraged Jenny to add some twists to her spinning dives across the hold.

The jolt was so minor he'd have thought he'd imagined it, except that everyone else did the same double take he did.

"What was that?" Dylan asked.

"Don't know." But his premonition was going wild. This was _wrong_. And not in the accident sense, either.

"Crane, can you hack into station comms? Without them knowing?"

"I guess so." She sounded surprised, but she didn't argue, going straight to the comm system on the wall and removing the front cover in short order.

"Shall I go out and look around?" Dylan asked softly.

He wanted, badly, to say no and do it himself. He knew that was a stupid idea. If there had been an accident, he'd only be in the way, and if his premonition was right...well, in his current condition he'd be utterly useless.

Dylan wasn't the right person to send, though. Mark instead waved Dimitri over. Not as much raw potential, maybe, but a whole lot more experience, and a cool head in a crisis.

"Osprey. Go out there, see if you can figure out what's going on. Stay out of sight."

Dimitri raised his eyebrows but said nothing. It was Jenny who squeaked, "Do you think it's Spectra?"

"I don't know. Crane?"

"There's nothing on comms. At all."

That was more than odd, after a jolt like that. "Codenames only from now on. Osprey, be careful."

"Understood."

"I'll get the lights."

Jenny frowned in confusion, and Mark mentally kicked himself. _They're not a combat team yet. They don't know the conventions, or understand the things I'm used to leaving unsaid_. "He needs to go out without being backlit. Hang on."

"Should we disable the door alarm?" Dylan asked, as Mark pushed across the hold to the switches next to the door, Dimitri following him.

"No time, and it won't be the only door opening and shutting. Ready?"

Three yesses, a pause before Paula's while she tucked comm wires safely away, and then he threw all the switches.

The door was opened before his eyes had accommodated fully to the dark, and Dimitri slipped out into the stark white corridor. All looked exactly as it always had, and for a moment Mark wondered whether he was over-reacting horribly to a perfectly normal orbital realignment.

_No_, his instinct said, and every time he'd ever ignored it, he'd been wrong.

The door shut, and from the pitch dark behind him, Paula asked, "Should we leave the lights off while we wait? Just in case someone's checking. We can use infra-red."

_Well, you can_. "We'll do that," he said, continuing to hang onto the handle next to the door.

"Commander," Dylan said hesitantly," why can't you transmute? You've got the bracelet."

_Oh, good grief, he still doesn't get it_? Mark didn't bother to hide the impatience in his voice. "No power from the implant means no resonant field. Transmutation won't work without it."

"Yes, well, I was thinking...does it have to be _your_ resonant field? If everything else still works? Because, you've probably never been the one struggling, but it's a darn sight easier to transmute if other people are doing it at the same time. Once the Osprey gets back, with three of us, we can put up a pretty strong field around you."

"Four," Jenny said.

"You're not good enough at it yet."

"I'm good enough to be net positive to the field. Aren't I, Paula?"

"I said codenames!" Mark snapped. "Raven, it's an interesting technical question. I don't know. For the sake of an infra-red visor, I have no intention of trying it."

He stopped, freezing as an old, familiar sensation vibrated against his wrist, and coloured lights sparkled in the pitch black. Bird Scramble. He'd been right. This was not good at all.

"He's in trouble," Dylan said, his voice barely steady. "I'll go -"

"You'll go nowhere, Lieutenant." Instinct rather than knowledge again, but Mark was sure that this wasn't a cry for help, more a warning. His suspicions were right, or, at the very least, Dimitri had discovered something troubling. He couldn't see Dylan's expression, but he could practically taste his impatience and frustration. The kid wanted to be out there, not waiting in the dark. Mark empathised with every bone in his body.

The door opened without warning, and Mark threw the lightswitches even before he'd thought about it. His eyes shut despite himself, and when he managed to see again it was to find Dylan lowering the cablegun he'd held in the Osprey's face.

"Mark?" the Russian asked, and at the tone in his voice Mark didn't have the heart to pull him up on a lack of codename. "Please tell me this is not a drill."

"'Mitri, what happened?" Paula was alongside the ash-white Osprey, hands on his shoulders, peering into his face. "Tell us."

"I...there are Spectrans out there. Armed. I took one of them out, and then I thought, what if this is just a drill? And I checked. He wasn't Spectran at all, he was human. Did I just kill some poor bastard on a training exercise?"

"It's not a drill," Mark told him. "It's _not_, Osprey. Now, you took one out permanently. Well done. How many more are there?"

Dimitri made a very visible effort to pull himself together. "I saw three separate teams of four, all escorting station staff towards the hub."

"And the one you took out?"

"He was on level four, guarding the intersection of spoke seven with the inner ring. That would be a logical way to get to the dock from this side of the station. He...the body is in an emergency refuge."

"Good work." Mark looked around, evaluating their current location and finding it wanting. The lights had gone on and off more than once since the first signs that anything was wrong - unavoidable, but rendering it unsafe as a base of operations. They needed to get out of here.

"We should move. Our quarters. Raven, you lead."

Dylan opened the door cautiously, peered out in all directions, and slipped into the corridor. Paula followed, with Jenny close behind her. Reluctantly, Mark put himself fourth. Dimitri was a far more competent rearguard than he himself was right now, and man, did he feel vulnerable out of birdstyle and unarmed. If they did meet a Spectran patrol, the best he could do would be to get as far out of the way as he could. He'd told people to do just that, on more than one occasion, without any consideration of what it must be like for them. They were guarded, right? Nothing to worry about, since they could leave the fighting to someone else? Not at all. It was an awful, helpless feeling.

Three identical, deserted corridors. Three junctions, where the Raven stopped, checked, and then signed for them to continue. And then there was the door to their quarters, and Paula was swinging it open while Dylan and Dimitri covered her, and he and Jenny kept out of the way.

All the security cameras were still and silent, their red blinking lights dead. There had been no alarms of any kind, and on a space station, you warned first and said "oops, false alarm" later. It had happened on a semi-regular basis for the past week, mostly resulting in someone being ritually humiliated for leaving a door open at one of the communal mealtimes. So, that suggested strongly that no warnings would have gone out beyond the station either. No cries for help. Spectra was here, and ISO didn't know about it. If the regular station crew was going to get a message out, they'd have done it already and the alarms would be shrieking. That left him. And he had no chance of doing it like this.

"Don't touch the lights," he murmured as the door opened. Paula gave him a sharp nod, eyes indistinguishable behind her grey visor, and slipped inside. The rest of them followed, Mark encouraging Jenny with a hand in the small of her back, and Dimitri pulled the door shut behind them.

It wasn't exactly light in there, but it wasn't dark either; the circular window on the end wall facing onto a brightly lit surface a few feet beyond it. Just light enough for him to see movement and silhouettes, but not to read body language or expressions. He didn't need reminding of just how pale all four had been under the corridor lights. They weren't ready for this, even though they were all he had.

They weren't ready for this _alone_. With advice, they might make it. But he had to go out there with them, or risk discovery because of transmissions being picked up, or simply through one of them being heard talking into a bracelet. He couldn't go out in civvies without being a total liability. That left one option that he was aware of, and he had no idea whether it would work. Then again, he'd commanded G-Force. He was entirely familiar with having no good options, and making the best of what he had.

"Team, I'd like you to detransmute. We're trying the Raven's idea."

"Commander," Dylan said, and Mark could see the attempt to appear taller than he was, "send me. No offence, but I don't think you're ready to take on that many Spectrans yet."

"I'm sure I'm not. This will take all of us. Four of us," he amended, glancing at the newly named Kestrel.

"I'm coming too," Jenny said quietly, but with determination. "I'm either one of this team or I'm not."

Keyop had said the same, furiously and frequently, when he and Mark had first joined G-Force. Mark had been his defender then, arguing that it was downright dangerous for everyone if they weren't used to working as a full team.

"How are you feeling?" he asked her.

There was a sound half way between a laugh and a sob. "Better. I'm too scared to feel sick."

"What do the rest of you think?"

Mark had the distinct impression that glances were exchanged, before Dimitri spoke up.

"She is one of us. She should come. And - if they realise we are here? If they find her, alone, she has no chance at all."

He could see nods in the gloom, and the preliminary movements for detransmutation. Mark shut his eyes against the blinding flash, and only opened them again when Dimitri asked, "What is the Raven's plan?"

"We make the biggest resonant transmutation field we can with Mark right in the middle, and hope it's enough."

"That will work? External energy like that?" Mark couldn't see Dimitri's face, but the frown was audible.

"I have no idea." And Dylan was backing away from his own suggestion, now it looked like it would be tried. Mark clenched his fists and tried to feel optimistic.

"In the middle?" Paula asked, more practically. "Or on the circle?"

"You're right. On the circle." Mark swallowed, his heart beating so loud he was sure the others must notice. They, though, were already moving to form the circle. Dylan to his right and Dimitri to his left, with the two girls completing the ring. It was time to get on with it, and to stamp his authority, however briefly, on this team which was temporarily his.

"Ready?"

There were what he assumed to be nods from all around him - at least nobody said no - and Mark took a deep, slow breath and let it out again. This was marginal at best. He had to be completely focused, utterly coordinated, accept the resonant field as his own. Took another breath, bringing his left forearm up in a long, slow, exaggerated sweep. He could see movement all around him, but not how good their timing was. He could only hope.

Top of the sweep, hand turned over, and the point of no return.

"Transmute!"

Five voices raised in unison, and a long-missed rainbow light flared all around him. Mark had never been much into religion, but at that point he came as close to praying as he ever had. _Please, let this work. Just this once_...

For a moment he was sure it wouldn't. For another, much longer moment, he wondered whether it was possible for it to go wrong much worse than simply not working. But then he felt everything shift, the old, familiar sensation of birdstyle adjusting itself to a perfect fit. The light died, and he opened his eyes to the visor adjusting itself to give him enhanced vision in the low ambient light.

Blue-tinted vision, with a single line of distortion right down the middle. He still dreamt in it occasionally, and woke up sweating and shaking. He'd never expected to see it again for real. Now, he had one last command in birdstyle. A bunch of trainees as his team, and a couple of squads of goons the enemy. Hardly a glorious finale - but one which could easily go horribly wrong unless he kept it tightly under his control.

"I don't know what your chain of command is in a military situation, and I don't care. I'm putting myself at the head of it."

"Of course," Dimitri said calmly.

"We need to get a message out to ISO. I imagine the Spectrans are using the station as a Trojan horse, to attack a target we'll pass over later in the orbit. We may not have much time."

"So we need to retake the control room?"

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Mark smiled. "No, Raven. You're not G-Force yet. You and I will run distraction. Now, the bracelets can't have enough range or we'd already have a response to the Osprey's scramble. Crane, where do you need to be to get a Mayday out to ISO?"

Paula wore a distinctly 'rabbit in headlights' look, and Mark took pity on her. "Base of the main antenna?" he suggested. "Some sort of emergency set somewhere?"

Her face cleared. "Backup control room. But it's right over the other side of the station, down on level one on the outer ring. They'll see us on the cameras."

"The cameras are off." Mark read shock on every face. "You didn't notice? My guess is that all the security was disabled, so they could get on board without anyone noticing. Inside job of some sort."

"Inside job?" Dylan's jaw dropped visibly. Obviously the trainees hadn't been party to the knowledge that there were humans fighting for Spectra too. No time for discussion now, though.

"Yes. Live with it. Osprey, I'm presuming that sort of disable would be pretty darn subtle, and take a while to undo. Especially without anything showing up on the telemetry. Am I right?"

Dimitri nodded. "I believe so."

"We'll assume so. We don't have a lot of choice. But be aware of the camera lights - if they come back on, assume the Spectrans know exactly where you are and what you're doing. Anything else?"

"Can we build our own transmitter?" Jenny asked. "From the emergency equipment we have in here? Save going out at all?"

Mark shrugged, leaving that one to Paula.

"Not a long range one. Maybe if we got to main stores?"

"That's right in the centre, even more inaccessible," Dylan said.

"Then we go for the backup control centre. Raven, that station plan?"

Dylan nodded sharply and dived into his cubicle, shortly reappearing with the map.

Five helmeted heads bent over it, Mark tracing a roundabout route from their current location with a blue-gloved finger.

"Right round the outside, Osprey. Your job is to get the Crane to where she can do her job. This is the backup control room, here. Level one's the busiest, normally - so stay up on four or five and then drop down when you get close. Kestrel, you're with them, but stay out of the way if anything happens. Understood?"

"Understood," the girl replied, her voice wavering.

"Go, now. We'll wait three minutes for you to get clear, and then start making ourselves obvious in the other direction, even without cameras. Raven, are you up for this? Because the goons are going to think you're the weak link, and I'm not going to do anything to put them straight."

Dylan nodded. "I understand. I'm ready."

_Man, I hope so_. Mark just nodded back to him. "Osprey, move out."


	6. Chapter 6

As the door closed near-silently behind the Kestrel, he double-checked the time, and then turned to the Raven. Blue and black, not colours the Spectrans would have seen before, and short enough for it to be obvious that here was someone new. But would the Spectrans see him as a soft target to take out first, or as no threat to be left until they'd dealt with the Eagle?

"Give me a rundown of what you're armed with."

Dylan indicated the cablegun at his hip - Mark had seen him practice with it, though more as a tool than an offensive weapon - and also held out a handful of shuriken. Those Mark hadn't seen him, or any of them, use - shuriken weren't on the training list for this week, and they'd had plenty to worry about with what was.

"And how good are you with them?"

The flush said it all, really.

"Stick with the cablegun, then, if you need something beyond hand-to-hand. You know what this is?" He put his hand to his right hip, and it fell naturally onto the boomerang holstered there. He'd not so much as seen it since he'd left it in the locker for Jason to find, the day he'd walked out on them. He pulled it out, flicked the blades open. Like riding a bicycle, it felt as if he'd never been without it.

Dylan nodded. "Sonics. I thought our helmets shielded us from it?"

"From the worst. It's still unpleasant. Chances are I'll not use it, the corridors are too narrow. But if I do, keep out of the way. It's more dangerous than just the sonics." _Not to mention that I haven't thrown it in ten months, and never in zero gravity_.

Dylan put out an uncertain hand, and Mark passed the weapon across. Dylan took it with a degree of awe, turning it over in his hands and admiring the razor edges on the blades.

"I always wanted to carry one of these."

Mark raised his eyebrows. "So why the cablegun?"

"I found out it's not as easy as it looks. I need a whole lot more practice." He handed it back with a rueful expression.

Mark holstered it, and checked the time again. Still a minute or so to wait - the last thing he wanted was to have the attention he planned to attract run into the Osprey's group on its way here. Time for a few last words of advice.

"Now, I want you to hang back. I figure they'll be so scared to see the Eagle again, they won't think straight. That should give us the edge. But the most important thing is that nobody gets away. If they figure out I'm not the threat I used to be..."

"I'll do my best." Dylan drew a ragged breath. "Is it time to go yet?"

"Close enough. Turn the lights on and we'll let them know we're here."

As Dylan did that, Mark took a not entirely steady breath of his own and hit the comms switch. "This is the Eagle here. You guys need any help clearing up the scum?"

Dylan's jaw dropped visibly, and Mark swung the door to their quarters open, left it that way, and headed out in the opposite direction to the way he'd sent the other three. They, he was relieved to see, were nowhere in sight.

He was unsurprised, though gratified, to get to the first door in the corridor without a Spectran in sight. The goons hadn't speeded up any, then. He stopped and waited, taking the chance to glance down in full light. Birdstyle moulded itself to the wearer - and, in his case, that meant he was displaying an almost complete lack of leg muscle to the world. He only hoped that said world would be far too busy taking in the red, white and blue of the Eagle, out in public for the first time in nearly a year, to notice.

"What now?" Dylan muttered as he caught himself neatly on one of the handles on the wall and swung to a halt.

"We wait to be seen. Then, we go through, round the corner into the side passage, and stop."

"Turn and fight!" Dylan's face cleared.

"Exactly."

He heard the pursuers coming before he saw them; saw Dylan stiffen and knew he'd heard them too.

"Three," Dylan whispered.

He nodded, braced against the wall and ready to move.

"...Twenty-two, the call came from," one of them was saying as he came into sight. "Hey, the door's open, and...whoa! There they are!"

"Move!" Mark muttered, and flung himself round the corner, adrenaline racing through his system while his subconscious registered that they were speaking English. _Steady_, he reminded himself. _No implant speed. Keep it clean and simple. The kid'll manage one. Take the first one out with one hit, and it's a straight fight with the second._

Dylan swung silently to a halt alongside him, six feet round the corner just as he'd said. Mark spared him a single glance, just long enough to determine that he was ready rather than paralysed with fear. That was all the time he had.

Three goons piled round the corner, almost one on top of the other in their haste to pursue, and found themselves nose to nose with a pair of figures, one blue and white, the other blue and black.

Mark didn't dare pull his punches. He felt the first goon's neck crack at the first blow, caught the second a little more awkwardly, but still managed to swing him hard against the wall. There was a yelp and the man went limp, cradling a smashed left arm. One slamming left hook later and he was floating unconscious.

He swung round ready to help Dylan, only to find the kid wide-eyed, a third floating body next to him.

"What...what do we do with them?"

"We leave them here to scare their friends."

"What if they wake up?"

Mark smiled grimly. "Then you didn't hit them hard enough. Let's move."

* * *

><p>He'd sent the other three on a vaguely circular route round the outer ring of the station. Making distraction diametrically opposite to them might be a bit too obvious, even for your average Spectran captain. Instead, he headed in towards the centre. He'd have set changes if he'd dared, to create more noise, smoke and confusion, but he had no real idea what the station's structure could withstand. As a last resort, he'd have to do it anyway - but he'd prefer not to sacrifice everyone on the station if there was any way to avoid it. Given that all the intruder alarms had been disabled, he had no faith that the safety systems would be any more functional. He wished now he'd reminded the others of the incomplete third ring; airlocks leading to corridors filled with nothing but vacuum.<p>

In lieu of explosions, he had Dylan opening doors, flicking lights on or off, generally leaving some trace of their passage. And it wasn't long before another patrol caught up with them. This one contained only two people, and was dispatched even more rapidly than the previous group.

There was nothing from the others, and Mark hoped desperately that this was a good sign. He was reluctant to call them for fear of giving their position away. Even if the signal couldn't be traced, he wasn't sure whether the Spectrans would know it was present. If they did, he'd be giving away the fact that there were two groups out there. No. they'd stay silent, and rely on someone being quick enough to get a Bird Scramble off if they were discovered. Oh, for a real, fully trained team. Thinking about the personnel he had to work with made his blood run cold.

Corridor. Corner. Check in all directions. Pick another corridor and repeat. The third one had another patrol of three, but they weren't a challenge. Dylan was coping better than Mark had ever thought he would. There were still no alarms - even leaving major intersection doors open wasn't triggering the screaming audio alerts that it should have done. He did it anyway. If he needed to blow the station, he wanted to take as much of it out as possible.

Oh, to have the Phoenix sitting outside, someone on it with the time and facilities to figure out what the Spectrans' target was and how long he had before they reached it. Then again, had the Phoenix been outside, they'd have taken the opposition down by now. Easily. No need to skulk about, taking on two and three at a time. Back when he'd been fit, he and Jason would have gone in, not exactly all guns blazing, but they'd have made directly for the control room, knowing full well that in these narrow corridors there was no way for the enemy to get enough people close enough to overpower them.

The only warning he had was just a whisper of movement, from the side away from Dylan. Raw instinct threw him to one side, and the blow deflected off his helmet. His ears rang, and for one sickening moment he froze, no idea where the enemy was or how to react.

One glimpse was enough. A black cape, a black helmet and the vicious downward-pointing curve of a dark, mirrored visor. They were in a lot of trouble.

* * *

><p>The Blackbird whirled, coming in for a second attack, and this one Mark did see coming. He blocked it, turning the momentum into a slam against the nearest wall.<p>

"That all you have?" The man caught himself deftly, and with an ease which Mark envied, turned and came back at him, leg outstretched. The obvious counter was a flying scissor-kick. He had no hope of doing that. Instead, he ducked out of the way and then dived after, hoping for a grapple.

Mistake. Horrible mistake. The Blackbird slipped past him easily, and stared, just out of reach. As if in slow motion, Mark saw the other looking him up and down, assessing what he'd just seen. A pair of hands-only attacks, in situations which called for anything but. Had this been a cartoon, he'd have seen the lightbulb come on over the man's head.

No leg-based attacks. No leg-based speed. A silhouette which had to look like a bad, bandy-legged caricature of how he had been. The Blackbird knew. No question. Knew, understood the significance, and whirled to escape with the news. Mark couldn't get close to him. The corridor was too narrow for a boomerang strike, and in moments the man would be away and his secret out. The Eagle was crippled and defenceless.

A flash of blue from his left side, the scissor kick he'd so obviously been unable to perform himself. The Blackbird floated limply, and the Raven gave a single whoop of triumph.

"Nicely done," Mark said as calmly as he could manage, checking all around them. Blackbirds didn't travel singly - there would be four or five more here. If just this one had stopped to take Dylan out first...well, that would have been the end.

"He was good," Dylan said nervously. "Man, I never realised how good. Way better than me."

"Yes." There was no point in sugar-coating it. "Keep sharp. He'll have friends."

"More than one?"

"Probably." Mark was checking the Blackbird as he spoke, hoping to find some clue as to what the Spectrans were doing here. Instead, he found blond curls escaping from the man's helmet and, on peeling back the eyelid, eyes almost as blue as his own; a colour no Spectran ever had.

"Something wrong?"

"Human." Mark sighed, trying to figure out what this might mean. "The goons, too, from the accents."

"Maybe they planned to replace the station personnel."

"Could be." But _why_? The supply shuttle was no prize capture, and the launch pad no secure facility either, with little more than a couple of giant hangers, a support structure for the shuttle's vertical takeoff, and a scatter of hastily erected prefabricated buildings for its terminal.

Not enough information, and no time to waste on speculation. Mark removed the Blackbird's helmet with the same sharp twist which worked on his own, and bowled it down the corridor towards the control centre, being sure that it bounced off the wall, round the corner and out of sight.

"Now what?" Dylan asked.

"Now we stop trying to be seen."

* * *

><p>It was inconvenient, but no real surprise, that Dylan wasn't carrying explosives. For Mark, they still came with the birdstyle. Small, star-pointed spheres which would blow a hole in the station wall with no problem whatsoever. That, he knew, would get ISO's attention as the station tumbled out of alignment. The number of open internal doors he'd left behind him would mean a significant venting of atmosphere. It was still his last resort. He didn't have to do it yet.<p>

If Dylan had figured out that his plan B involved blowing them both to hell, he didn't say. Just stood watch as Mark carefully dismantled two of his explosive charges, pouring half the powder from one into the other and then sealing both up again. Being very sure he had them the right way round, he tucked the supercharged one back into his belt pouch and the weakened one into his left glove.

"Now for a good target..." he mused out loud, heading down the spoke towards the outer ring. They were on level five now.

"Escape hatch, inside an airlock?" Dylan suggested.

"Because they'd never figure out that we could achieve the exact same thing by just disconnecting the safeties and opening the outer door?"

Dylan flushed. "Power conduits?"

"Too likely to do real damage. I'm not ready to risk the crew yet." He was setting up for his chosen target as he spoke. One of the myriad of blank panels which might one day be replaced with the junction to a new section of corridor or the door to an accommodation pod. A pointless non-target, chosen solely because he was sure it could stand the explosive force.

Dylan went back on guard as he extracted his weakened explosive charge and attached it securely, and Mark could see the confusion in his eyes. He considered that a good thing. His experience lay in confusing Spectrans, and what they had here was a squad of humans. But if Dylan hadn't figured out what he was doing, hopefully neither would your average human Blackbird.

* * *

><p>He'd given them two minutes to get clear, and right on time there was a dull crump. Still no sirens. Mark's appreciation for the technical knowhow of whoever had arranged the takeover was going up by the minute - they'd got this station locked down tight.<p>

"Now what?" Dylan asked.

"We do it again." Mark found himself another blank panel to mine and set to work in a hurry. Every nerve he had was on edge. He knew they were being hunted and that he had to keep it that way. That hadn't changed - but he hadn't bargained on it being Blackbirds. He only hoped that, somewhere over on the other side of the station, the Crane was getting the message out.

* * *

><p>Another identical corridor. Another randomly placed explosive. Mark had hoped he could goad the Spectrans into using the comm system to blast abuse at him, maybe make a mistake and transmit in a way which would also go down to ISO. It hadn't happened, and so he had no idea what their state of mind was, except to be sure that they were still being pursued. He'd caught a glimpse of black wings a few corridors back. Half an hour earlier he'd have stopped and set up an ambush. Now he was tiring badly, and doubted his ability to add anything useful, combat-wise. While Dylan was acquitting himself well, in one-on-one with a Blackbird he'd be mincemeat.<p>

How long would it take the Phoenix to get up here, from first alert? It was entirely possible that it could take them a couple of hours if Jason was at the track, Princess and Keyop at their off-base homes at Jill's, Tiny at his waterside apartment. Rick still lived on-site, as far as he knew, but no matter how skilled the Kite was these days, he was only one man. Could he even be sure that G-Force was on Earth at all? If they'd been called away and were the far side of the galaxy, he didn't like to think how long it would take for help to get up here.

How long would it take Paula to get a message out? Could he even be sure that it was going to happen? He desperately hoped that things were in motion already. He knew he and Dylan couldn't stay free indefinitely, and yet under no circumstances could he allow himself to be captured until he was sure that help was on its way.


	7. Chapter 7

One gasp from Dylan was all the warning Mark had. His instinctive duck out of the way almost certainly saved his life, as the vicious kick intended to break his neck instead skidded off his helmet. A second blow caught him hard in the ribs, and Dylan hit the wall just in front of him, two Blackbirds in close attendance.

Two on Dylan. Another two on him. Mark twisted, trying to stay unpredictable, fumbling in his pouch. No question, this was it. He'd have preferred not to take Dylan out with him when he blew the station, but in war you rarely got to pick your plot. His hand had closed round four or five explosive charges when he heard a familiar laugh from behind him.

Two limp Blackbirds spun into view. The Condor, very much not limp, spared him a single wave before piling into Dylan's opponents. One hand on a shoulder of each and he slammed their heads together with a ringing crack of helmet. Except for their continued floating drift, both stopped moving.

Jason's stare at Mark in birdstyle lasted maybe half a second, before one floating Blackbird drifted into him and he pushed the man out of his way in disgust. "You rang?"

"The Crane did. They may be in trouble -"

"Owl and Swallow are with them. You okay, Raven?"

Dylan was certainly very white under the grey-tinted visor. "Yes, Commander."

"Cracked your head good?"

There was the sort of aborted nod which spoke louder than words, and an expression which could only be described as a grimace.

"You know the concussion drill. Stay with us. Eagle, can you keep an eye on him?"

Mark nodded, more than a little lost. He'd never been subordinate to Jason before. Heck, in a combat situation, he'd never been subordinate to anyone before. But there was no question that he was now. G-1 had arrived and stamped his authority on the situation. Just as he would have done.

"Do you know what the target was?"

He'd have given almost anything to be able to say 'yes' and demonstrate that he was still capable. Instead, he was forced to shake his head and speculate. "I'm guessing it's something under the orbit, and the station is a Trojan horse."

"The Swan thinks Rio, in ninety minutes."

"So we have to find a bomb, a missile, something?" Dylan queried.

Jason laughed, just briefly. "Their mecha was hanging off the Earthward side of the station when we showed up, with a giant satellite dish pointing straight down on the underside. We presumed it wasn't there to transmit Simpsons reruns. It's in pieces, and we just need to finish mopping up in here. How many Blackbirds did you account for?"

Mark sagged in embarrassment. "One."

"Two junctions back that way, short of a helmet, blonder than the Kite? He's on his way to the Phoenix brig."

Jason's matter-of-fact manner was about the only thing he could have handled, Mark decided as he watched his former second truss the Blackbirds neatly and efficiently, using a function he didn't remember the cablegun having. He said as much, when Jason paused.

"They've taken to going after things we can't afford to blow up." He grimaced. "And call me sentimental, but I don't much like killing in cold blood. Plus this way nobody tears strips off me for shooting first and asking questions later. They can ask their own stupid questions." He raised his bracelet. "G-3? Four more parcels for collection, this location."

"That's twelve." Keyop's voice was tinny from the bracelet.

"Two full squads," Jason acknowledged. "Likely to be all of them, but stay sharp. I'm heading for Control."

But he didn't move right away, and Mark belatedly realised just how much he must be hating this. Full combat with Blackbirds, in freefall. It was a wonder Jason was still functioning at all. He knew him far too well to comment, though, instead pointing down the corridor. "That way."

"Rabbit warren," Jason commented, moving off.

"Slowed them down chasing us, though." Mark indicated that Dylan should precede him, and the young man did just that, though his normal fluidity of movement was definitely missing. He knew his own was, too. Now that the adrenaline had slowed, all he could feel was exhaustion. This should have been the point where he stopped running on implant-enhanced speed and went back to normal, waiting to allow the implant to recharge only when it was convenient for him to let go. Instead, he was struggling with grinding physical exhaustion such as he'd rarely known. His newly rediscovered leg muscles had simply had enough. He followed along, gritting his teeth to keep going, only pride keeping him from admitting just how wrecked he was.

* * *

><p>The control centre was occupied by over a dozen technicians, most half-invisible, their heads inside removed panels on consoles all round the walls in every possible orientation. Princess and the station commander were side by side, both focusing intently on the centre console. Princess had an eye on the door, though, and straightened up as they came in, addressing Jason.<p>

"I've removed the last of their interference, Commander. ISO's getting normal telemetry now."

And then she stopped and stared at Mark, as completely thrown as he'd ever seen her. Not happy. Not angry. Just shocked.

He'd have given anything at all for her to come flying over to him the way she once had, raw delight at seeing him back in one piece overriding any sort of military decorum. She didn't. Not by instinct, not even after having looked and thought. He wasn't one of them any more. Acknowledging it still hurt, every time.

"Raven," the station commander asked, "is Commander Jarrald accounted for? And the rest of your team?"

Dylan froze, rabbit in headlights. _At least it'll be interpreted as him not knowing and not having considered it_, Mark thought, as Jason stepped in smoothly.

"Safe on the Phoenix."

Mark cleared his throat. "Someone took the security cameras out. We shouldn't leave them with a possible infiltrator still up here."

"Not an issue." Jason's expression was borderline smug. "Proclaiming to the rest of the station crew that they should defect to Spectra kinda gave him away, apparently. He's in the Phoenix brig along with all his little Spectran friends, gassed and sleeping sweetly. And we need to go. G-2, if you're done here?"

"I'm done. The cameras are on, I've run a full sweep scan, and a body heat check on the living quarters. We have all of them."

"Then...Commander..." The station head looked nervously from Jason to Mark, and replaced it with, "Commanders, no offence to the Raven's team, but we still have a whole lot of work to do up here..."

"And no time for trainees. We'll take them out from under your feet," Jason said, and Dylan stiffened visibly.

"Thank you. For everything. I...don't know what to say..." His gratitude was more than a touch embarrassing, and Jason waved it off.

"Forget it, it's our job. Next time, raise the alarm yourselves."

The man nodded, apparently unsure as to whether the Condor was joking, and Jason simply headed for the exit without so much as looking to see who was following him.

* * *

><p>Judging by Jason's route, the Phoenix must be docked away from the Earth side of the station. He wasn't hanging about, either. Mark set his teeth and made himself keep up. He'd seen Princess have a quiet word with Dylan and then stay close to him, for which he was profoundly grateful. He needed all his concentration to keep his lack of condition from being entirely obvious to the station crew, now out in the station corridors checking, as far as he could see, everything down to the paint finish. They were hanging back, respectfully not staring, as the birdstyled group approached...but Mark could feel their eyes on his back once he'd gone past. He could all but hear their thoughts: <em>that's the Eagle, and he hasn't been seen in months<em>! Anything different now, any sign of weakness at all, one loyal crewman making a comment to a less loyal friend planetside, and he'd be the lead news item in half a dozen countries whose news services valued sensationalism over planetary security.

Conversely, the Eagle's reappearance at the heart of a major foiled Spectran infiltration could hardly have been a better cover for his absence. If only it were true. Mark calculated the distance to the docking bay in terms of seconds, set his teeth, and dug for every last scrap of energy he had.

The airlock, door already open wide, was one of the most welcome sights of his life. Too tired to even attempt a proper feet-first stop, Mark took most of his speed off with his arms and let himself hit the wall hard enough to have earned a reprimand from any zero-g tutor. Princess steadied him discreetly, then, obviously aware of their audience, gestured to Dylan to precede them into the airlock.

Jason was waiting in there with poorly concealed impatience, and as Mark dragged himself inside he slammed the hatch shut. "Gravity, G-5," he gasped into his bracelet.

Protocol demanded a gentle increase in gravity to give people a chance to orient themselves correctly and get their feet on the floor. This was exactly what happened, from nothing to just enough gravity to give a sensation of up and down, and at that point Jason abandoned all protocol and threw the inner airlock door open. He took one staggering step through the gravity gradient into the Phoenix before he ripped his helmet off to show himself a ghastly shade of greyish-green. Two desperate, unsteady breaths and he bolted out of sight, heading towards the Phoenix's basic facilities.

"I thought he was in a hurry," Princess commented. "Come, Raven. Helmet off, and the Owl can take a look at you."

"Is he sick?" asked Dylan hesitantly, removing his helmet as instructed. One hand went up to the left side of his head, and he rubbed it gingerly as he walked out of the airlock.

Princess's head tilted in a way Mark remembered well, her way of indicating amusement without rudeness. "No. Just the zero g. Now..."

The two of them turned the corner, going right where Jason had turned left, and Mark still hesitated in the airlock. Princess had left him, he was quite sure, out of some feeling that he should be given some privacy to come back onto the ship that had been his. But even in microgravity he was struggling, and he knew full well that once over the threshold the gravity field would be considerably stronger. Strong enough for those who could, to be walking normally. In all likelihood he couldn't even crawl in it. Dragging himself to the flight deck on his stomach would round off his humiliation nicely.

He'd just considered that Jason should be coming back this way, hopefully before anyone else came to check on him, when Dimitri appeared round the corner. A quick signal behind him, and Paula followed.

"It is set to one quarter g," the Russian told him. "Is it too much?"

"Yes," Mark admitted. Better those two than Keyop or Rick, at least.

"Then can we help?" He didn't wait for an answer, just positioned himself to one side of the airlock door, as Paula came to the other. Mark didn't give himself time to think about whether there was an alternative, put a hand on each of their shoulders, and stepped forward.

His first thought, as his legs bucked under him, was that this was some vicious joke, the gravity field set at nearer two gs than a quarter. His second, that Dimitri of all people would never do that, and his third to wonder what he had been thinking? He'd been in a wheelchair on Earth. He'd be back in the chair the moment they landed. He hadn't walked in several months, and it was going to be long weeks of rehab until he could come close to making an attempt. For a moment he seriously wondered whether the station commander would let him stay.

_And then I'd never walk again_. That was enough to keep him going. But even keeping up the illusion that he was doing anything other than being carried took all his effort. Mark barely processed that he was on the flight deck of the Phoenix for the first time ever without being in command. Not until he was helped into one of the fold-down passenger seats against the rear wall did he start to pay attention to his surroundings.

Nothing had changed. From the patched cracks in the wall plating, to the discoloured floor where they'd been flooded far too many times, she was old and battle-scarred. In the front right chair where he still felt he belonged, a red helmet and wings lined with white. Rick didn't even glance round. Mark wasn't surprised. In Rick's position, he'd have been pretending his predecessor didn't exist too.

_Keep up that line of thought, and you'll be howling for your old job back before we've even undocked_. Mark determinedly turned his attention to his current job. Force Two, training and analysis of, responsibility for. He'd done the training, and now was a perfectly good time to begin the analysis. Once he'd discharged his duty of responsibility.

"Straps," he said quietly to the young team members occupying the other seats. "And helmets." That was a perfect excuse for him to look down and take a stupidly long time adjusting his own. He didn't glance up again until Dylan took the seat next to him and fumbled his own seatbelt fastened.

"You okay?" Mark asked him.

The young man flushed. "Apart from seeing two of everything and the splitting headache, I'm fine. I'm sorry, Commander. I never saw them. Nor heard them."

"Blackbirds are good," Mark told him. "You took one out. That's more than I was expecting."

"Dylan took a Blackbird out?" Mark hadn't noticed Keyop at all, but there he was, seated at his station and avidly listening. Had the kid been warned off talking to him directly, he wondered, or did he just not want to? "More than Rick's done."

There was a snort of derision from the front right seat, but nothing more.

"Commander Jarrald faked him out," Dylan commented, keeping a wary eye towards the front of the flight deck. "I just kicked him in the head. Clear shot. The Kestrel could have done it."

"Kestrel, is it?" Princess turned around, flinched away from catching Mark's eye, and smiled at the girl alongside him. "Good choice, Jenny."

"Dylan came up with it, but I like it." She was sounding immeasurably happier now they were in gravity. That was a very good sign, Mark considered. Quick recovery was almost more important than whether you had a problem in the first place. The man striding back onto the flight deck now was the prime example of that.

Jason barely glanced at the audience sitting at the back of the flight deck, taking his seat with an easy flourish to avoid sitting on the wings of his birdstyle. A rapid glance at his console - not much for him to check on a flight going no further than an orbital platform - and he called for his team to sound off.

_His_ team. Mark bit his lip so hard he tasted blood. Dammit, he'd accepted this! It wasn't supposed to still hurt. He shouldn't need to struggle not to react, to count the scratches on the floor. He should be able to sit and listen to G-Force doing nothing more exciting than boring, everyday pre-launch checks without wanting to shriek in frustration.

He knew these, bone-deep. Could have done them himself, now, blindfolded, even after all these months. Faster than Rick Shayler, too. And all of a sudden he felt a wave of empathy for another man who had returned to the Phoenix flight deck as a passenger. Don Wade had sat and stared at the floor just like this. Was this what he had felt: waves of desperate envy for the man sitting in that front right seat doing a job he felt was his? At the time, Mark had held nothing but contempt for the former member of G-Force. Now he understood only too well how Don had felt, and probably still did. And, indeed, why Rick was pretending his predecessor didn't exist. He wanted out and away from here. It felt like forever until the Kite confirmed his readiness and Jason gave the order to disengage.

"Roger," from Tiny. The vibration, deep beneath his conscious hearing, which told of the engines winding up to their operational level. And, for no reason he'd ever been able to explain, he knew the moment they'd disengaged from the station, just a fraction of a second before the Phoenix began to move away under her own power.

Dylan, beside him, was grinning like a loon. On his other side, three eager faces focused on how the experts did it. Mark just leant back into his chair, legs aching more than he'd thought possible, and sought distraction. Paperwork was all he had to look forward to. The reports he'd be writing on the four trainees, their readiness to be a real combat team - and their desperate need for an experienced fifth member.

* * *

><p>They weren't five minutes out when Jason invited the trainees to come take a look at the systems. Dylan immediately headed up front, stood between the two pilots, and held an animated conversation in which he appeared to have more to say than the two of them put together. Dimitri was rapidly deep in discussion with Keyop, much more emphatic speaking his native Russian. Paula went over to Princess, Jenny beside her, and listened while the Swan pointed out some subtlety of the comms system. Jenny herself, turning away from a conversation she surely couldn't understand, froze, staring longingly at Jason's console and the mass of controls needed for interstellar jump.<p>

And Jason noticed, flicked the switches to fire up the sensors, and leant back, the sardonic grin visible even at this angle.

"You're the calculator? Find me a jump-point and a solution."

She pointed nervously at the screen and then, when he did nothing more than zoom in on the area in question, started chanting numbers. It sounded wrong to him in any other voice than Jason's, and he had nothing to check them against. Jason, though, nodded approvingly and turned the screens off again, and Jenny made her way back to her seat, her face a mixture of delight and awe.

Forced concentration in the face of adversity was something he'd always been very good at - but at that point he was so jealous it hurt, and all he could do was to shut his eyes and force himself to remember the rules of English punctuation, and formal ISO report writing style. All the way down. By the time they dived into the ocean several miles out from ISO headquarters, he had memorised the most immaculate report Anderson would have ever seen.


	8. Chapter 8

They docked as uneventfully as he would have expected. The engines cycled down to silence, and it was over.

"Commander?" Dimitri queried, and he couldn't even look up.

"You four to Medical," Jason said. "The Eagle's with us."

That bought him the time that G-Force took to shut their consoles down, and then Jason was back alongside him.

"Coming?"

And that was all it took. Frustration and embarrassment exploded inside him, and his head snapped up with a jolt that vibrated all down the back of his neck.

"Yeah, sure, I'll just dance all the way to debrief, shall I? Because we all know I've been faking everything all this time. _I can't walk_! Ignore it all you like. I can't."

Jason opened his mouth, shut it again, shook his head, and simply walked past him off the flight deck. Mark returned to staring at the floor. He didn't care. They could send some orderly in to carry him out.

There was some whispering and muttering, which he could have listened to if he'd wanted to. More people left, booted feet passing through the edge of his peripheral vision. And then someone large and heavy sat down alongside him, the whole row of seats flexing in response.

"Jase didn't deserve that, Mark."

Tiny. And he was right, of course. Not that it helped.

"Do you want me to fetch your chair?"

"_No_," he spat out before he'd even thought about it.

Tiny sighed and shifted position. "You make it damn hard to help you, you know that?"

"Acting like there's nothing wrong with me doesn't help."

"I guess not." Tiny was utterly calm without being condescending, clearly listening to what was being said, and Mark's fury subsided, replaced by a fresh wave of hammering exhaustion.

"Let me call someone back. Two shoulders, and we'll have you out of here in no time."

Mark shook his head, still staring at a piece of floor which by now he could have reproduced in every detail from memory. This was it. Over. No more birdstyle. No more Phoenix. All gone, forever.

"Mark, please talk to me! I can't just leave you here."

"No? 'Always five' - remember that? Go be one of the five, Tiny. I'm not any more. I'll get myself out. Not paralyzed any more, remember?"

Tiny snorted. "What I'm remembering right now is you yelling at Jason that you can't walk. And 'always five'? God, Mark, do you have to rub it in?"

The crack in his voice was such a surprise that Mark's head came up despite himself. "Rub what in?"

"You can't have missed it." Tiny was staring at him, raw disbelief all across his face. "You...I mean, we've tried to hide it, we figured we've got most people fooled...but you? I guess you've not seen enough of us to pick it up. Rick's not working out. We're four plus one, and sooner or later it'll all come crashing down. I thought it might this afternoon, but Rick behaved himself in front of an audience. He does that, at least."

Mark's depression was forgotten. "What the hell does he do normally?"

"Bitches about being left on the Phoenix...pushes, questions, insinuates...general pain in the backside stuff."

"And Jason puts up with it?"

"Hell, no. Today was the first mission in months where he hasn't blown up at him. Keyop winds and winds, Rick retaliates, Jason goes ballistic, Princess wrings her hands and begs everyone to play nice, and I fly the ship and pretend it isn't happening."

"Oh." Words were inadequate. Now he could see it, of course, going right back. Way back. Rick announcing on TV what an integral part of G-Force he was now. And he'd never even considered that it might only be a public facade. He'd swallowed the hype, and he'd kept himself away. He'd not wanted to push into a newly cohesive team. He'd slammed a wall up between himself and his friends because he'd been so sure it would happen from the other side if he waited. He'd assumed that Rick had stepped into his shoes both professionally and socially. From the sounds of it, he'd been wrong on all counts.

"Oh," he said again, uselessly.

Tiny just kept looking at him, horrified sympathetic understanding creeping across his face. "I should have -"

"I'm a big boy, Tiny. My mistakes are my own fault." And now, if it wasn't way too late already, he could put some of them right. Take the walls down on his side, at least. Only then would he know if he was facing blank concrete on the other side.

And if he had any chance at all, he needed to start right now.

"Is my chair out there?"

"At the bottom of the ramp."

"Then..." Mark swallowed, looking around at the scene of so many of his triumphs. Screens dark now, seats empty - but still the nerve centre of ISO's flagship. "I won't sit in a wheelchair in birdstyle. Or in here."

Tiny nodded. "Can you stand?"

"I'm not sure." In fact he was completely sure that he couldn't, not unassisted. And Tiny had to know it, because the hand he offered provided a lot more than just a boost to vertical, and before Mark had time to object, he had an arm round the other's shoulders, and Tiny was taking most of his weight as they moved slowly out of the flight deck.

The ramp almost defeated him. Even with a handrail he'd have struggled. That had never been a requirement for the Phoenix, and he hesitated at the top, contemplating twenty feet of steel gridwork at a downward sloping angle of twenty degrees with a dread which he'd once reserved for Spectra's toughest mecha.

Tiny said nothing, just tightened his grip to provide more support, and Mark inched his way uncomfortably downwards, having to concentrate on every movement. The first eight feet was pure hell. After that, he was at least low enough that he could use the edge of the Phoenix's hull for support, and his arm strength wasn't an issue. He made it another eight feet with much less difficulty, and then Tiny said, "I'll get the chair," and helped him over the side of the ramp and to sit on it.

His initial impression was confusion - the chair was sitting at the bottom of the ramp, and he hated the part of himself which found it inviting - but as Tiny sauntered slowly down the rest of the ramp, he put everything together. Tiny knew full well he couldn't detransmute by normal means. He needed both hands free to remove his bracelet. The only way he could have that now was to sit down, and he'd made it entirely clear that the Eagle was not sitting in a wheelchair in birdstyle. So, the edge of the ramp it was. An awkward, sloping seat, the edge digging into his right thigh and falling away under his left. Tiny, though, was returning with the chair, and he he had only seconds before it became entirely obvious that he really, desperately didn't want to do this at all. He'd humiliated himself enough in front of the Owl already today.

Mark shut his eyes and worked the fingers of his right hand round the fastening of the bracelet on his supporting left. Steadying himself mentally wasn't going to happen, and he was fully aware that if he waited, he'd be unable to make himself take it off. This, he was quite sure, really would be the last time.

The sharp twist, flexing the strap in a way no enemy would ever reproduce, and as the bracelet came off in his hand the transmutation field flared, scarlet through his closed eyelids. The sensation of birdstyle was gone, and with it the last vestige of strength in his legs. Mark barely kept himself from toppling sideways down the ramp, and then, overwhelmed by hopeless frustration, he flung the useless bracelet away from him. He heard Tiny exclaim, then the bracelet strike something, drop, and skitter across the floor. He still didn't look. Just sat and fought with himself, telling himself that it would get better, just like the psychiatrist had recommended. He was no longer paralyzed. All he needed now was time and work to get back on his feet.

_And I don't care_, his subconscious answered back. _If I can't have this back, I simply don't care_.

_No_? _You'd sit and watch G-Force fall apart_? another part of him asked. _You'd leave Jason to handle a disintegrating team with nobody to turn to_?

At least he could spot the self-pity now, and pick the part of his personality that he actually _liked_ to side with. Mark opened his eyes again to see Tiny pushing the chair reachably close, a question in his eyes. To which the answer was no, with full Earth gravity crushing him into the ramp, there was no way he could get into it by himself. And Tiny knew it, this time taking all his weight and lowering him into the chair. Mark just sat there and gasped, tired beyond exhaustion.

"Are you even up to a debrief?" Tiny asked him, concern in his voice.

"Yes." That came out surprisingly steady.

"Okay, Commander." He didn't sound convinced, but, thank goodness, that didn't translate into expressions of pity or attempts to help. Mark had been quite particular in his choice of wheelchair, when he'd eventually been persuaded that he needed to buy one. No handles. He couldn't have cared less about canted wheels, the height of the back, or the choice of trendy colours and wheel infills. He'd gone for stark institutional silver - _this is a tool, not a part of me_. But he was not going to be pushed around. He headed for the elevator without looking to see whether Tiny would follow.

* * *

><p>He'd been concerned that his medical checks would take forever - or that someone would have reported his distress on the Phoenix and he'd be subjected to a barrage of 'I told you so'. In fact, Chris took one look at him and presented him with a lidded cup of the green slime he remembered so vividly. Possibly the vilest concoction known to man - but as restoratives went, this one worked.<p>

"I take it you're exhausted?" he asked, handing it over. "I need to run a full set of tests, but there's no point while you're so tired you can barely twitch. And Mike Bennett should take a look at your implant, see what effect that forced transmute young Dylan was telling me about has had. Tomorrow morning?"

Mark felt his eyes widen. "Effect? Bad effect?"

"I doubt it, but I'd like to be sure. How do you feel in yourself? Any after-effects from pushing yourself that hard?"

"Does wanting to curl up and die count?"

Chris smiled. "To be expected. You'll be stiff tomorrow. Call me if you're too uncomfortable. For now, I'm happy if you are. If you're up to it, I believe debrief is in room one."

* * *

><p>After what Tiny had said about the state of the team, he was utterly determined to be up to it. One thing which did carry over, crippled or not, was his ability to keep going, to push through grinding exhaustion until he hit the point of total collapse.<p>

He had the knack of doors now, though it had taken a while. That was something which the new chair had made a whole lot simpler. Enough that he'd learned to make it look casual, and to close the door quietly behind him while looking around the room where he'd reported on so many missions, so many successes, a few disasters. It hadn't changed. There were no windows in here, no overt electronics. Just pale wooden panelling all the way round from floor to ceiling, the standard grey carpet, and the ubiquitous two inch black stripe running round the walls, painted on four feet from the floor. A table in wood to match the walls, nearly twenty black leather chairs, and a simple slide projector hanging from the ceiling. In his experience, only the top end of the table was generally used, but today there were far more people present than just a single team of five. G-Force were in the chairs they'd always used. The trainees were seated two either side of the foot of the table, near the door. From the shifts in posture when they noticed his entry, they'd been waiting for him.

Up at the head of the giant oval table, some thirty feet from him, Anderson's seat was empty. The man himself was standing facing the extended projector screen on the far wall and talking on his communicator. Jason was in the seat which Mark instinctively thought of as his own, a ring binder filled to bursting point lying on the table in front of him. As Mark rolled his chair to the nearest space at the foot of the table, Jason opened the file, flicked through a few pages, closed it. Opened it again, apparently at random.

_He's stressed as hell_. Now that Tiny had pointed it out, it all seemed so obvious. There was Jason, doing anything to avoid having to look at anyone. Rick, leaning back in his chair, the expression almost a sneer...

_No_, Mark chided himself, _it's nothing like that bad_. _Stop casting him as the villain_. But there was no question, the body language was there. Rick was most dissatisfied with his commanding officer. Where had it all gone wrong? Rick had worshipped the ground Jason walked on, once. And Jason had trusted Rick to the point to taking him out, half-trained, on a deep space rescue mission. It should have worked. So why was it such a mess?

As Anderson returned to his chair and glanced around in that way he had of checking whether everyone was ready, Mark sat up in his chair as much as he could, aware he was several inches lower than everyone else at the table, but unable to face the physical effort required to transfer to a standard chair. He listened absently as Anderson ran through the standard opening phrases for a debrief; the whole lot would go on tape, and ISO required that people were reminded of it. He could have given the spiel himself without even thinking about it. Down to the last word, the last adjustment of the glasses and glance round the table, finishing up with his gaze focused on the commander of G-Force lounging in the black leather chair to his right. That was the cue for Jason to stand up and give his report.

"I think Mark should start this one," Jason said.

He was right, of course. Jason knew nothing about what had happened on the station until Paula had got the message out. Even so, couldn't he at least have warned him?

_Yes, and he probably would have done if you hadn't snarled him into leaving_. Mark sat hard on the self-pitying side of his psyche and took five seconds to settle himself, forcing down his brain's reflex insistence that reports were given standing up. He couldn't, and it didn't matter. He'd done everything he could up on the station. More than he'd expected to be able to do. More, he was pretty sure, than anyone at this table had thought him capable of. Nothing to hide, no agenda, just tell it how it was. The kids had done well, and G-Force had done better.

* * *

><p>"Thank you, Commander," Anderson said formally as he reached the point where Jason had joined him. "Comments?"<p>

He was looking round the trainees, at Dylan in particular, asking the standard question to see whether the team members felt anything had been missed or misrepresented in their acting commander's report. When nobody did, it was Rick who spoke up first.

"You sent out three trainees, alone? Including her?" He indicated Jenny, with more astonishment than disdain.

"Everyone starts somewhere." Mark met his eyes squarely. There were people to whom he'd admit just how nervous that had made him, most of them in this room. Rick Shayler was not one of them, and he sure as hell wasn't going to explain his command decisions to his replacement.

To his surprise, though, he read no hint of superiority in the other's reaction. No judgement, no condemnation. Rick simply said, "I couldn't agree more," and cast a glance in Jason's direction. Jason wasn't even looking.

* * *

><p>Jason's own account was brief; little more than "we arrived, we blew it up, we fixed the station, we left," with a couple of before-and-after images of the saucer-dish mecha he'd described projected on the screen. Tiny and Keyop added more details about the combat on the station. It had been short and painless; apparently Blackbirds were now just a normal day's work for them. Princess explained precisely what had been done to disable the station's automatic warning systems, and how she'd put them right afterwards. Rick said nothing, merely shaking his head when Anderson asked if he had anything to add. And that was the moment when the tension went out of Jason as though someone had pulled the plug.<p>

_There's something rotten in this team. Something they're hiding even from Anderson_. _A lot more than just a dissatisfied crew member_. And the thought made him sick to his stomach. If G-Force fell apart...what then? Force Two? They simply weren't ready.

"Thank you, team," Anderson said finally. "And thank you, Force Two. Exciting though today doubtless was, I do hope you haven't forgotten everything you learnt in the preceding week, and you will be debriefed more fully tomorrow. Commander Jarrald, I'd like to thank you for stepping in, and I'm sure Major Grant will be contacting you in the near future to ask for your feedback. Dismissed."

_Don't call us, we'll call you_. Mark didn't know whether to smart at the casualness with which Anderson had said he was now surplus to requirements, or be relieved that he hadn't made a big thing of it. For the moment, he sat and smarted, finishing the remainder of his drink in the hopes that it would give him the energy to get back to his quarters. And, without another word to him, Anderson left. The Force Two trainees left, a couple of uncertain glances thrown his way but nothing said. G-Force left, all except Jason who had paused to add the pile of paperwork required post-mission to his folder. And Mark had the sudden image of a steel door slamming shut in that concrete wall he'd built between them.

"Jase?"

Already most of the way to the door, Jason turned back. "Yeah?"

"I'm sorry." He resisted the temptation to look down. "You hit a raw spot. But I shouldn't have yelled at you."

Jason shrugged. "It's nothing."

_No, not to you, not any more_... Mark abandoned his empty glass on the polished wood of the table, swinging his chair round to fully face the other. "Tiny told me about Rick."

Jason went from casual slouch to full Condor faster than a blink. "Told you what?"

"Things I should have seen for myself. Look, Jase, it's none of my business. I won't try to make it my business. But if you want to talk about it off the record, you know where I am."

Jason hesitated fractionally, then spun on his heel and left at a near-run.

_He didn't even try to deny there's a problem. Is that good or bad?_ Mark shook his head, then dropped his hands to the wheelrims and pushed slowly for the door, regretting the gloves he'd not needed in freefall. He'd made the offer, and there was nothing more he could do to help. He was done physically - and Chris was right, he'd suffer tomorrow. But for now, he'd keep going steadily. Out of black section, back to that specially adapted room in Heron block, and sleep for eighteen hours. And after that, back to rehab. First things first. He'd get back on his feet, and he'd take it from there.


End file.
